Alas, Poor Kaito
by mangaluva
Summary: Kaito, heir to Elsinore playhouse in Kyoto, sets out to avenge his father's murder at his uncle Snake's hand, a quest which will only bring death to him and those around him in the manner of one of the greatest tragedies of all time...
1. Forenotes

_**Forenotes**_

_Hamlet _is my personal favourite of William Shakespeare's plays. It was written sometime between 1599 and 1601- while the precise date is uncertain, it is almost certain that it was written for Shakespeare's son Hamnet, who died around this time. It is his longest play and one of the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language. Generation after generation of actors and actresses on stage and screen have had great figures whose defining roles were in Hamlet.

I don't know where the idea came from, but I saw parallels between Kaito and Hamlet's quests for vengeance, though I can only pray that Kaito's has a happier resolution. I have adapted a number of characters from both Magic Kaito and Meitantei Conan as characters in this tragedy, from Kaito as Hamlet himself to Gin and Vodka as Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. This has, in some cases, resulted in a slight twisting of a character's personality to fit the role, and some odd familial associations (Hakuba, as Laertes, is now Aoko/Ophelia's brother; Snake, as the villainous Claudius, is Toichi/Old Hamlet's brother and Kaito's uncle/stepfather). I gave Kaito's mother the name Minami, the same name I give her in all my fics. Beyond that, the characters should be pretty easy to figure out to anyone familiar with the story; for those who aren't, there will be a synopsis below.

All dialogue is taken straight from the lines of the play, with only minor adaptations as befits the slightly altered scenario. It is now set in a theatre and playhouse in modern-day Kyoto called Elsinore, owned by the greatest magician in Japan, Kuroba Toichi- though he has died, of course, and his brother has taken over the playhouse, and is being challenged by the protégé of its previous owner to prove his skill at magic. Lines and names have been slightly adapted to this- "king" changed to "magician", and other small things- but otherwise the lines are faithful, though slightly truncated since if I copied in the entirety of the dense prose, I might never finish typing and you will quickly get bored reading! The play was, of course, written to be heard rather than read, and I encourage you to do so if possible. Shakespeare rolls in his grave every time a student yawns while dissecting it in class- he's probably burrowed his way to China by now. Those who have done so, who have every aspect of the story now inscribed into their brains, can now read on. For those who don't know the story or are unclear on it, here is a synopsis.

The story begins as two guardsmen of Elsinore Castle in Denmark, Francisco and Marcellus, witness the ghost of the departed king, along with Horatio, a scholar and best friend of the prince Hamlet. We then see a meeting presided over by the new king, Claudius, who it is revealed it the brother of the deceased king and has married his widow, Gertrude, making him both Hamlet's uncle and stepfather. Hamlet visibly resents this, as he reveals when alone. Horatio then appears, telling him of his father's ghost, which he intends to see. We then briefly see the family of the court chamberlain, Polonius, his son Laertes advising his sister Ophelia to be careful, as Hamlet has sworn love to her but neither Laertes nor Polonius believes it. Polonius even forbids her from seeing him. Ophelia is upset but has no choice but to obey; Laertes leaves for France.

That night, Hamlet witnesses his father's ghost, which explains the circumstances of his murder by his brother's hand, and Hamlet swears revenge. To disguise his plans, he acts up a descent into madness, which is blamed on Ophelia's avoidance of him; two old "friends" of his, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, happily agree to spy on their friend for the king and queen to find out the truth. They try to entertain him with a group of actors, but Hamlet, to trap his uncle, secretly rewrites their play, so that the king the dies within the play dies in the manner that his father did, and the murderer marries his queen. Hamlet then meets with Ophelia, spied upon by Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius, and violently rejects her, which convinces all but Claudius that his madness is due to her rejection of him.

They watch the play, and it has the desired effect; Claudius can watch no more than the murder scene, proving his guilt in the eyes of Hamlet and Horatio. That night, Hamlet argues with his mother; he then stabs and kills Polonius, who had been hiding in the room, believing him to be a spy or even the king. Gertrude believes that her son has truly gone insane; Hamlet takes away Polonius' body and buries it secretly. Claudius orders his departure to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, secretly giving the latter two a royal commission for Hamlet's immediate execution upon arrival.

Once Hamlet has left, Ophelia, from a combination of his rejection, her brother's leaving and her father's death, goes genuinely insane; this breaks Laertes' heart when he returns from France, seeking vengeance for his father's death. Hamlet's voyage is interrupted by pirates, who are apparently a rather friendly lot who offered Hamlet a lift home to Denmark. Claudius and Laertes devise a plot to murder Hamlet upon his return, by challenging Hamlet to a fencing match where Laertes shall secretly have a poisoned sword; should he fail to scratch Hamlet, Claudius will offer him a poisoned drink. They are confident in the success of this plan when Gertrude appears to tearfully report that Ophelia fell into a river and drowned, which only cements Laertes' resolve to see Hamlet dead; however, this cracks at Ophelia's funeral, when Hamlet confronts him, claiming his true, deep love for Ophelia.

Hamlet accepts the match. Before the match, Hamlet explains to Horatio that he had in fact discovered the commission for his execution and had secretly altered it, so that it is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, not he, who will suffer execution upon arriving in England. During the match, which Hamlet is winning, Gertrude toasts Hamlet's good luck, accidently drinking from the poisoned cup and dying; Laertes wounds Hamlet, enough to draw blood and thus enough to set the fatal poison through his veins, but then drops his sword in horror of what he had done, and Hamlet grabs it up, also slashing him with the poison. With his dying breath, Laertes reveals the king's treachery; Horatio prevents Claudius from escaping and Hamlet forces the poisoned drink down his throat, killing him. Horatio too, surrounded by the dead and dying, attempts to take the last of the drink, but Hamlet stops him, begging him to live and tell the truth to the world. He then dies and the Norwegian army enters the castle; with no heirs remaining to the Danish throne, Prince Fortinbras of Norway claims it, ordering Hamlet to be buried as a soldier.

So in the end, pretty much everybody's dead except, alas, poor Horatio. Now please enjoy my adaptation. Updates will be made whenever I finish an act (there are five), but since it's gripped my brain and won't let go that'll probably be soon XD.


	2. Act the First

_Act the First_

_Outside the Elsinore theatre and playhouse, Kyoto_

Jodie shivered as her short blonde hair was tousled in the breeze, half-longing to be inside in the beckoning lights and noise of the show that was on. In the dark streets of late-night Kyoto, the showhouse was a beacon of light and noise- though a darkness had descended on it lately, since it had changed owners, and sometimes, despite the light and warmth, the building chilled her. But she was paid too much to walk away from a job where she simply stood at the door and prevented people from sneaking in for a free show or to cause _other_ trouble, and jobs were hard to come by these days, especially in the notoriously jealous entertainment industry.

She saw something shift in the shadows a little way down the road, headed towards the theatre.

"Who's there?" she called to the approaching figure. "Stand! And unfold yourself!"

The man stepped into the light spilling out of the foyer, and she relaxed. Though the man had the face of a criminal, she knew him well enough to know that there was a good soul inside that lumpen face and sharp mind. More importantly, he had the guard shift after her.

"Andre?" she sighed. "You come most carefully upon your hour."

"'Tis now struck twelve," he said, pulling his nametag out of his pocket and affixing it to his uniform suit jacket. "Get thee to bed, Jodie."

"For this relief, much thanks…" she sighed gratefully, removing her own nametag and rubbing her eyes under her glasses. "'Tis bitter cold and I am sick at heart."

"Have you had a quiet guard?" Andre asked, glancing down the empty road, beckoning to the theatre with a jerk of his head and a mocking smile that said "_aside from all that_".

"Not a mouse stirring," she said, fingering in her pockets for her keys and making to leave.

"If you do meet Shinichi and Shuuichi, rivals of my watch," Andre asked her as she walked away, "Bid them make haste."

"I think I hear them," Jodie said, glancing to the side as two figures quickened across the empty street with familiar fluid, purposeful gaits. "Stand!" she called. "Who's there?"

"Friends to this ground," a young man said, and Shinichi stepped into the light illuminating Jodie and Andre, with Shuuichi only a pace behind. "And liegemen to the magician."

Jodie nodded to them and continued on to her car. She knew the men- Shuuichi worked there as she did, though almost never on the same shift, and Shinichi was a friend of the stepson and nephew of the owner of the theatre, the son of the previous owner. Well, Andre could deal with them.

"Welcome, Shinichi," Andre said jovially. "Welcome, good Shuuichi."

"What, has this _thing_ appeared again tonight?" Shuuichi asked sharply. Andre's jovial manner faded as he remembered precisely what his colleague was referring to.

"I have seen nothing…" he said uneasily, staring up into the dark night sky as if the denial would act as a jinx.

"Shinichi says 'tis but our fantasy," Shuuichi said, glancing with a twitch of a mocking smirk at the younger man, "This dreaded sight, seen twice of us…" he too glanced suspiciously at the sky.

"Tush, tush, 'twill not appear," Shinichi laughed, his blue eyes sparkling as if to mock the men, which he was in fact doing. "Let us hear Andre speak of this." He had already had enough of Shuuichi's version of the tale. If they were imagining it- which he was certain that they were- then they could not possibly have had identical hallucinations. Inconsistencies would appear in their stories.

"Last night of all," Andre began, raising his voice as a burst of cheering came from the theatre- the show was probably ending soon- "Shuuichi and myself… the bell then beating one-" he fell silent, staring at the sky with bulging eyes, colour leeching from his face. "Look where it comes again!"

Shinichi and Shuuichi turned, to behold a terrifying apparition. The lights from the theatre seemed to pale into darkness, so that only the glowing white figure, deeply familiar and yet so strange, seemed to exist in the world; his dark hair, still a slight mess in death, fell over one eye, shadowing a face that seemed to be made of light. He was still dressed in luminous yet transparent white, pristine and perfect as he floated, huge, above them, wrapped in blue spirit fire, the flames not touching him. His visible blue eye seemed to pierce them, striking straight through the three, bringing the truth of the wrath of Heaven to them and pulling from them a powerful desire to simply fall to their knees and confess every sin that they had ever committed. Shinichi stared, dumbfounded. This was in defiance of all science, all logic, and yet he trusted nothing more than the testimony of his own sight…

"In the same figure, like the magician that's dead…" Andre said in a trembling whisper, "Looks it not like the magician?"

"Most like…" Shinichi admitted in a quiet undertone. "It harrows me with fear and wonder." He knew that Shuuichi might have been watching him again with that irritating golden glare that he always got when he was right and you were wrong, but he would have to take his eyes from the spectre of Kuroba Toichi to do so, and Shinichi knew that he could not.

"Question it, Shinichi!" he prompted him instead. Shinichi swallowed to steel himself, spreading his arms in supplication, then forced his voice to life.

"What art thou that usurp'st this time of night?" he called to the vision, "If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, speak to me. If though art privy to this place's fate…" he glanced at the theatre. The audience had not left the hall; it was as if the ghost had frozen time and space to have its own. "By heaven I charge thee," he continued, his voice stronger, echoing off the buildings, "_Speak_!"

The ghost did not; instead, with a last piercing glare- he was not smiling; he had always smiled in life, and now he did not, and the effect was disconcerting to say the least- he turned, drawing a billowing white cloak around him, beginning to fade.

"Stay!" Shinichi called desperately, stepping forward as if to follow it. "Speak, speak! I charge thee, _SPEAK_!" He ran forwards, but Shuuichi grabbed his arm, yanking him back just as he ran into the road; the headlights of a lonely passing car blinded him for a moment, and then by the time it had passed the ghost was gone. Shinichi fell to his knees by the roadside, his whole body suddenly weak and given over to a violent shivering, though he had not been cold before.

"'Tis gone and will not answer," Andre muttered redundantly. Shuuichi stared down at the shuddering Shinichi, inwardly only being thankful that Jodie had not borne witness yet to this terrible creature; she had known the old owner for a long time, and it would have broken her heart to see that he did not rest.

"Shinichi?" he said instead, reaching out to place a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "You tremble and look pale…"

"Is it not like the magician?" Andre whispered again, still staring to the sky, where the stars were still hidden behind the light pollution of the unsleeping streets.

"As thou art to thyself…" Shinichi said in a trembling voice, "'Tis strange. This bodes some strange eruption to our city…"

"Good now, tell me," Andre said, helping him stand and walk over to sit on the front steps, "why this same strict watch so nightly toils the streets? Why such daily mart for malicious gossip- the implements of war?" It was true that there was now fierce competition between Japanese magicians, ever since the one considered the greatest in the country had been reduced to the spectre that had just left them; they would use any weapon to bring themselves higher, often by climbing up the crushed reputations of their peers.

"The last magician was by Tsukumo Motoyasu dared to a faceoff," Shuuichi remembered, thinking of the vicious rivalry that had existed between the two great magicians many years ago, before… "Our valiant Kuroba Toichi did succeed, as Tsukumo died attempting to perform the greater trick, and thus forfeited his life, and this theatre which had stood as the wager."

"Now, young Sanada Kazumi doth well appear to recover of us, by skilful magic, this foresaid place so by his mentor lost," Andre said, speaking of the late magician's greatest protégé, who had argued that Kuroba Toichi's death onstage meant that he were not such a great magician, and was rapidly building his own reputation as a more skilful magician than the current owner, a man who was certainly a lesser magician that Toichi in the opinions of the men sitting on the cold steps.

"And this is the main motive of our preparations," Shuuichi concluded, "the source of this our watch, and the chief head of this poste-haste and rummage in the theatre."

Light burst upon them; the showhall was emptying, oblivious, chattering crowds swarming down the steps towards them. The three quickly moved out of their way, towards the post where Andre should be standing.

"Let us impart what we have seen tonight to young Kaito," Shinichi muttered to the other two, apart from the happy masses, "for upon my life, this spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it?"

The other two glanced at each other, an obviously nervous look meeting one that was always cold and certain, whatever was happening underneath, and they nodded.

Shinichi watched people pour into the street, still gripped by a cold, dark uneasiness that no amount of light and warmth could dispel.

_The office in the apartments of the magician and theatre owner, Snake_

"Young Kazumi, thinking by our late brother's death our work to be disjoint and out of frame, hath not failed to pester us with the surrender of this place and reputation lost by his mentor."

Snake angrily slammed his hand down onto his desk at the mere thought of the arrogant young magician who had been rapidly rising in popularity lately. Was he not as good a magician as his late brother, if not better? Something had to be done!

Enter the paparazzi.

"We have writ to Tokyo," he said, "to find some means to suppress his further gait." He nodded towards the two officers in the corner of the room, who had agreed to verify some particularly disturbing rumours about the young man which might just be perfect to destroy his reputation- and clean criminal record. "We dispatch you, Takagi, and you, Sato, to Tokyo."

"We show our duty," the two choursed, leaving the room.

"Heartily farewell," Snake said to their departing backs. Minami frowned but said nothing. She was still pretty for her age, a slim woman with long dark hair, but she was still evidently a woman who was nearly fifty, with few talents beyond her stage skills as a shill. She should probably not be capable of marrying again at her age, let alone- but still, it kept her son in college funds and a roof over both of their heads, albeit the more glitzy than usual roof of the apartments in the very top floor of the Elsinore Playhouse. She disapproved of such gossip warfare- _Toichi_ had never engaged in such, thinking it dishonourable- but then, the two brothers were as different as night and day. One would not even think they were related at all.

She wandered away from the conversation, staring up at the portrait of Toichi which still hung in what was now Snake's office as the head of security, Ginzo, entered with his son.

"Saguru, what's news with you?" Snake asked, all smiles and friendliness to the blond young man, the same age as her son. "What would'st thou have?"

"Your leave and favour to return to France," the young man said softly. "Willingly I came to Kyoto, to show my duty in your debut. That duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend towards France." He was a polite young man, and Minami was fond of him, and she wished that he would not leave- despite their rivalry, he and Kaito had long been friends.

"You have your father's leave?" Snake asked, glancing at the theatre's longtime head of security. "What say Ginzo?"

"He hath, my lord," Nakamori Ginzo said, placing a hand on his son's shoulder, a slight smile crinkling his face.

"Take thy fair hour, Saguru," Snake said with a smile and a wave. "Time be thine. Spend it at thy will." Saguru nodded and waved politely back, making for the door, which opened before he reached it, admitting a slight, pale young man with messy dark hair, almost the polar opposite of the blond, pristine Saguru.

"But now, my cousin Kaito…" Snake said, pouring on further god cheer as he spread his arms welcomingly, "and my son!" Minami looked around, catching sight of her son as he entered. He did not smile back at his uncle and stepfather, nor display any of the joy that radiated from the man. He was a world apart from the bouncy boy that she had last seen last summer holidays, before he had gone back to Wittenberg College, too far away for regular visits. He had next returned for his father's funeral, this dark depression already deeply set upon him.

"A little more than kin and less than kind…" Saguru murmured as he passed his old friend, placing a consoling hand on his shoulder before continuing away, eager not to miss his flight, followed by his father. Kaito's blue eyes- so sharp, so bright, so like his late father's- followed him away for a moment, before lowering and darkening again. These past couple of months, he spent much of his time seeming to gaze into another world, one that seemed to be situated around his knees.

"How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" Snake asked, even he unable to ignore Kaito's depression.

"Not so, my lord," Kaito replied softly, glancing up at his uncle with cold, deadened eyes. "I am too much in the sun."

Minami walked over to her downcast son, placing her hands on his shoulders and trying to look into his eyes, though he refused to meet hers. "Good Kaito," she said with false brightness, "cast off they nightly colour and let thine eye look like a friend on Kyoto." She glanced back at Toichi's portrait, her forced smile faltering. "Do not forever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know'st 'tis common… all that lives must die."

"Ay, madam, it is common," he said flatly, colourlessly, his eyes never leaving their watch of some lower level of reality.

"Why seems it so particular with thee?" she begged, reaching out to take his hand.

Suddenly filled with energy, he smacked it away again. ""Seems", madam?" he said with sudden venom. "Nay, it _is_! I know not "Seems"!" He strode away from her, anger crackling around him like lightning borne from the dark clouds of his depression. "'Tis not alone my suits of solemn black…" he continued, staring up at his father's portrait, his eyes sliding over his uncle as though he were not there, "nor the dejected visage that can denote me truly. These indeed seem…" his anger suddenly faltered, his voice, which had risen considerably, dropping again, depression consuming him once more. "But I have that within which passeth slow."

Snake watched his nephew's fleeting rage without a muscle moving on his face, only his warm smile slowly fading. Now, cool and calm, he spoke to Kaito's back, though whether or not the youth could hear him none could tell. "'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Kaito, to give these mourning duties to your father…" he bowed his head to the portrait briefly. "But to persevere, 'tis unmanly grief." He placed a hand on Kaito's shoulder, turning the young man to face him. Kaito's eyes widened in some odd surprise at the contact. "Think of us as a father. That which dearest father bears his son do I impart towards you…" Kaito's eyes finally rose to lock his uncle's in a mercilessly cold stare. Snake could read nothing in them. "You intent in going back to school in Wittenberg is most retrograde to our desire. We beseech you to remain here…" he continued, stepping away, unable to face the young man's cold glare any longer, turning his gaze instead to the far more pleasant sight of Minami. "Our chiefest courtier and our son." He slowly wrapped his arms around her, not looking back at Kaito, wondering if his eyes had changed at the contact. Perhaps they had only grown colder.

"Kaito, I pray thee, stay with us," Minami pleaded, always attempting to lighten the atmosphere. "Go not to Wittenberg."

He finally risked a glanced back at Kaito to see that his gaze had returned downwards once more. "I shall in all my best obey you, madam," he said, his voice now barely above a whisper.

"Why, 'tis a loving and fair reply," Snake said warmly, letting a smile spread across his hard features once more. "Madam, come. This gentle accord of Kaito sits smiling to my heart." His arms still around her shoulders, the two left, gently closing the office door behind them, leaving Kaito alone. It was only when alone that his Poker Face truly cracked, tears pouring down his cheeks as he slumped in the desk chair, head in his hands.

"O that this too, too solid flesh would melt…" he gasped, sobbing, thumping his head and hands against the desk. "O God! _God!_ How weary, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world…" he threw his head back, screaming to the uncaring world. "Frailty, they name is _woman_!" Letting his head fall back against the chair backing, he was now looking upside-down at his late father, wondering if he would still smile now. "Married with my father's brother," he lamented bitterly, "but no more like my father than I to Hercules." His head fell forwards again, almost panting as he fought to control his tears. "But break, my heart… for I must hold my tongue."

"Hail, my lordship."

His head jerked upwards as the door creaked opened, composing himself and drying his tears in a quick motion.

"_My good friend?_" he wondered as he recognized the voice, and then brought up a smile as he saw the young man who entered the office, not merely the same age as Kaito but often seeming to be the same _everything_. Perhaps narcissistically, the two had fast become best friends. "What make you from Wittenberg, Shinichi?" he asked his classmate with a false joviality akin to that his uncle had displayed not long before. Shinichi did not smile, perhaps sensing the lie- he was far too good at that sort of thing.

"My lord, I came to see your father's funeral…" he began, half-heartedly, for as good as he was at catching lies he was not so skilled at fabricating them.

"I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student," Kaito laughed coldly. "I think it was to see my mother's wedding."

Shinichi cast his own cerulean eyes downwards, away from Kaito's twisted, mocking gaze. "Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon," he admitted.

"My father!" Kaito could not help exclaiming as his fists clenched against the desk, pushing himself to his feet. "Methinks I see my father…"

"Oh, where, my lord?" Shinichi said in surprise, wondering if he had seen the ghost after all.

But Kaito merely turned a sad smile to him, staring at Shinichi with a deep and wounding grief. "In my mind's eye, Shinichi," he said softly.

"My lord…" Shinichi said, looking away, steeling himself for the tale to come. "… I think I saw him yester-night."

"Saw?" Kaito asked, faintly but cordially curious. "Who?"

"My lord," he said, lowering his voice lest some passerby in the corridor should hear- and there were many in such a large and prolific playhouse as the Wittenberg, which hosted many shows beyond the headliner magic act- "The magician your father."

"The magician my _father_!" Kaito cried, suddenly full of animation, flying over to Shinichi, staring him in the face, searching desperately for any trace of a lie, though he knew that Shinichi did not. "For heaven's love… let me hear!"

"Two nights together," Shinichi said, getting straight to the point, knowing that in Kaito's fragile mental state there was no time to waste, "Shuuichi and Andre encountered a figure like your father, and I with them the third night kept the watch."

"But where was this?" Kaito responded, eyes wide like a child's, attention riveted. "Did you not _speak_ to it?"

"My lord, I _did_!" Shinichi insisted. "But answer made it none." Kaito's energy fell, flopping backwards to sit on the edge of the desk, seeming suddenly drained.

"'Tis very strange," he commented, his voice muffled as he raised his hand to his mouth, as if bile had risen in his throat.

"As I do live, 'tis true," Shinichi agreed. Kaito wondered away, staring up at his father's portrait, the twinkling blue eyes above the warm, true smile seeming to still retain life, benevolently watching over them all.

"I would I had been there…" Kaito said, a wonder in his voice as he locked identical eyes with his father.

"It would have much amazed you," Shinichi said softly.

"I will watch tonight," Kaito decided, looking back over his shoulder at his best friend. "Perchance 'twill walk again…"

"I warrant you it will," Shinichi promised.

"I'll speak to it," Kaito swore, a new fire igniting in eyes long cold and dead, "though Hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace. Let it be in your silence whatsoever else shall hap tonight." He turned, rubbing his hands together as he planned. Shinichi mentally planned to locate coffee- his friend would not face his father's spirit alone.

"Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll visit you," Kaito promised. Shinichi nodded, recognizing that, his decision made, Kaito needed to be alone to prepare to face his father's ghost.

"My duty to your honour," he said, leaving and shutting the office door behind him.

"Farewell," Kaito called after him.

Alone again, Kaito did not cry this time but was still uneasy as he faced his father's portrait once more, wondering how much what he would see tonight would bear resemblance to his memories.

"_My father's spirit in arms?_" he wondered. "_All is not well. I doubt foul play; would the night were to come! Then sit still, my soul… foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes._"

_A park on the banks of the Kanogawa_

Saguru located his sister by listening to the melodious voice singing old folk tunes. Aoko adored nature; she was always in the nearby parks, often in the deeper parts with banks of flowers and woody copses. When he finally located her, she was sitting on a fallen log by the side of the river, looking like some wild child with a few of her favourite flowers twisted into her tangled brown hair and her shoes lying somewhere among the tall blooms, her bare feet dangling in the clear water. Still, it was so characteristic of the aura of purity and innocence that radiated from his sister; no wonder Kaito was so enthralled by her. Yet as he was now…

Well, Saguru was leaving tonight. He would not be here to watch over her. Better to warn her to watch over herself.

"My necessaries are embarked," he called, "farewell." Aoko looked up in surprise, having evidently not noticed his approach, her song haltering and falling silent.Her radiant smile, however, a precious rare beacon of true light in Elsinore these days, remained, only widening at the sight of her elder brother.

"And sister, let me hear from you," he said, spreading his arms, palms out, questioning. She stood, shaking her elegant dancer's legs to dispel water from her toes, the crystal droplets briefly twinkling in the twilight before rejoining the river.

"Do you doubt that?" she giggled, before throwing her arms around him in an affectionate hug. He held her close, as they had when they were children; he did not know when or even if he would return from France, he was now leading such a life there. The thought of leaving his sister alone…

But she did not think she would be alone…

"For Kaito and the trifling of his favours," Saguru said abruptly, still holding her, "hold it not permanent, not lasting." He felt her stiffen in his arms, and wondered if her smile had faded.

"No more but so?" she quietly asked, her voice almost pleading.

"Perhaps he loves you now," Saguru cautioned, smoothing her hair and looking over her head to the very top of the Elsinore, still visible over the tops of the trees, "but you must fear his will is not his own. Weigh what loss your honour may sustain if you lose your heart. Fear it, Aoko. _Fear it_!" Aoko broke away from her brother, looking away from him, fighting the hot sting of tears at the very suggestion that Kaito's love for her might not be true, nor that she would allow her heart to defeat her sense. But when she looked up at him again, her bright smile had returned, and she winked a bright eye at him.

"I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, as watchman to my heart," she promised in excessively pompous manner. A moment later, both dissolved into giggles. Aoko doubled up, clutching her stomach, and Saguru took the opportunity to dig her shoes out of the flowers and throw them at her, purposely missing. Instead, however, they clattered against another pair of feet.

"Yet here, Saguru?"

Both quickly sobered themselves as Aoko picked up her shoes and Saguru stepped forwards, straightening before his father.

"I stay too long…" he murmured to his sister, "here my father comes." Aoko stepped into her shoes as they composed themselves. Ginzo cast an inscrutable glance over his children before focusing on Saguru.

"My blessing with you," Ginzo said kindly, choosing to ignore his children briefly regressing twenty years, "and these few precepts in thy memory…" Aoko, knowing that he was about to embark on father-son advice and was thus not focusing on her, sat back down on the log and started rooting for her socks.

"Give thy thoughts no tongue," Ginzo began. "Give every man they ear but few thy voice. Costly thy habit as they purse can buy, rich, not gaudy. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. This above all…" he looked his son straight in the eye, an odd glint in his own, perhaps proud, perhaps sad. "To thine own self be true."

Saguru nodded, bowing slightly to his father as his watch beeped, knowing that he must leave soon. "I take my leave, my lord." He glanced backwards at his sister as he left. "Aoko, remember _well_ what I have said to you."

Aoko only waved as her brother left, praying that her father would not ask.

"What is it, Aoko, he hath said to you?" he asked.

"Something touching the lord Kaito," she hedged nervously.

"What is between you?" her father pressed. "Give me up the truth."

"My lord," she sighed, unable to suppress a smile at the thought of the young magician, "he hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion."

"Lord Kaito is young," her father said sternly, snorting dismissively. "Do not believe his vows."

Aoko said nothing, looking away when her father looked at her, but she knew that he could tell that she did not wish to be separated from Kaito.

"I would not, from this time forth," he ordered firmly, stormily, "have you give words or talk with the lord Kaito." He glared at her as she twisted her hands, staring at her now clad feet, but she knew that she had no choice against her father's dictates.

"I shall obey, my lord," she whispered. With another _harrumph_, her father turned and strode back to Elsinore, apparently satisfied that she would keep her vow; after all, he had access to every security camera in Elsinore, and Kaito did not often leave the playhouse these days. Aoko followed him, knowing that she was being summoned home, and already missing Kaito.

_Outside the Elsinore_

"It is very cold," Kaito said, pulling his coat around him, gazing morosely into his empty coffee cup. The hot brew had been finished hours ago, and nobody could tear themselves away from the front steps to fetch more. "What hour now?"

"I think it lacks of twelve," Shinichi said, staring up at the sky.

"No, it is struck," Shuuichi said, glancing at his watch. Suddenly, the light of the fluorescent hands was drowned out by something shining white. He did not need to look up to know, but did anyway. "Look, my lord…"

"It comes!" Kaito gasped, eyes rooted unblinkingly to the sky and the known yet unknown figure before him. Once more, his pristine white clothes seemed to glow, blue spirit fire once more wreathing him like chains in some morbid trick; once more one eye was veiled, the other almost piercing their souls. Father and son locked eyes for a long, silent moment, then Kaito's hands slowly fisted as he remembered his resolve.

"Angels and ministers of grace, _defend us_!" he prayed under his breath. "Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, I will speak to thee."

He reached out a hand to his father, raising his voice to call to him. "Magician, Father, Master of Illusions," he cried, "O answer me! Tell why the sepulchre hath ope'd his ponderous and marble jaws to cast thee up again!"

His father said nothing, but merely reached out a hand as if beckoning him, backing away. Kaito stepped forward to follow him, stepping into the road, but Shinichi and Shuuichi ran forwards, tightly grasping his arms to prevent him.

"It beckons you to go away with it," Shinichi cried fearfully, "But do _not_ go with it!"

"What should be the fear?" Kaito said coldly. "I do not set my life at a pin's fee… and for my soul, what can it do to that- being a thing immortal as itself?"

"What if it draw you into madness?" Shinichi yelled, refusing to relinquish his grip, as did Shuuichi. "Think of it."

"You shall _not_ go, my lord!" Shuuichi growled, attempting to drag him back into the Elsinore, but Kaito's struggles only redoubled as his father's spirit drew further away.

"My fate cries out!" he cried. "_Unhand_ me, gentlemen!" His father's spirit turned, as if checking to see if he was following. "Go on, I'll follow thee," he called, briefly weakening his struggles. Shinichi and Shuuichi weakened their grips accordingly, and Kaito took the opportunity to twist and slip away from them, knocking them to the ground and tearing away after the ghost. Within moments, he was gone. The two stared after him for a moment in shock.

"Something is rotten in the state of Kyoto," Shuuichi murmured.

"Let's follow him," Shinichi said, already on his feet. Shuuichi hesitated for a moment, as he ought to be on the door, but the show would not end for another hour; the girls behind the front desk could deal with anyone entering. He set off after his fleet-footed friends.

_An empty back alley in Kyoto_

Kaito considered himself in good shape- amazing shape, if he was honest, and he regularly entertained/infuriated classmates with amazing acrobatic feats, often when escaping the repercussions of even more amazing tricks- but even he was now beginning to falter. The ghost was leading him down empty roads, into darkness and away from people. Soon, his glowing form seemed to be the only light left in the world, even visible through his eyelids as he closed his eyes, leaning against a wall and panting heavily.

"Speak!" he gasped, wiping sweat from his forehead. "I'll go no further."

_I am thy father's spirit,_ the apparition- not quite _said_, it wasn't quite normal speech, more like a change in the texture of the wind that resolved itself within his ear as speech.

"Oh, heaven!" he gasped, staring at his father once more, exhaustion having nothing to do with the way he leaned against the wall as his knees gave way.

_If thou didst ever they dear father love,_ the ghost whispered, _Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder._

"_Murder?!"_ Kaito thought in shock. It had not been an accident? His fists clenched until his nails drew blood from his palms at the thought that some person could so coldly- and _successfully_- steal his father's life away. "Haste me to know it," he snarled, "that I may sweep to my revenge!"

_Now, Kaito, hear,_ his father commanded. _It's given out that, sleeping in mine workroom, a serpent for a trick stung me… but know… that the serpent that did _sting_ the father's life now wears his top hat._

"Mine uncle?!" Kaito gasped in shock. He disliked the man already, but if he had truly…

_Ay,_ the ghost confirmed, _that incestuous, that adulterate _beast_, won to his shameful lust the will of my most _seeming-_virtuous wife_… there was venom in the insubstantial voice now, as potent as that which had claimed his life. _Sleeping within mine workroom, thy uncle stole with juice of cursed Hebenon… in mine ears did pour the leperous distilment. Thus was I, by a _brother's_ hand, at once dispatched. _His laser blue glare now focused once more on his son. _If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not… but howsoever thou pursuest this act, taint not they mind against thy mother._ He began to fade, the alley sinking into darkness once more as a frozen wind swept through, stronger than normal, carrying his fading words to Kaito's ears. _Adieu, adieu, Kaito. Remember me…_

Kaito stared to the fading figure until long after he had completely vanished, unable to stop his "unmanly" tears from falling once more, this new information reviving his grief as fresh and strong as if his father had just died again mere moments ago.

"Remember thee?" he whispered to the falling wind. "Ay, thou poor ghost! Yes, yes, by Heaven! One may smile and smile and be a villain- at least in Kyoto. So, uncle, there you are!" his voice slowly rising until he screamed to the empty night, "I have sworn it!"

"What news, my lord?"

Kaito turned, blinking as his night vision reasserted itself, to see two patches of darkness slowly resolve themselves into the black-clad figures of Shinichi and Shuuichi, both sweating heavily as they finally caught up with him.

"No, you'll reveal it," he said quietly, loathe to risk revealing his quest.

"Not I, my lord, by Heaven!" Shinichi cried, looking scandalized.

"Nor I, my lord," Shuuichi swore desperately. Kaito looked over them once more. Shinichi was his dearest friend, and Shuuichi was not loyal to his uncle; he had been close friends with his father…

"As you are friends, scholars and soldiers," he decided, "give me one poor request." He drew his stunt gun from his pocket; it was only termed a stunt gun because it did not fire real bullets (not yet, but give Kaito some time with a screwdriver), but the thin steel playing cards could be embedded in metal, and thus could probably do damage enough to a person. "Never to speak of this that you have seen… swear by my gun." Some supernatural power seemed to grip him, his hair and clothes flying crazily in the wind again, a strange glow in his eyes.

"Oh, this is wondrous strange!" Shinichi gasped, but he and Shuuichi both bowed and swore.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Shinichi, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," Kaito smirked, striding past his kneeling friends to return to Elsinore. "But come, the time is out of joint." He stared up again to the dark sky, preparing himself for the task that was to come. "Oh, cursed spite," he whispered, "that ever I was born to set it right!"

_Thus ends act 1. You like so far? If there's anything- particularly any lines (I know some people find Shakespeare to be dense prose) that you don't quite understand, mention in a comment and I'll get back to you ^_-_

_I do not claim to own Magic Kaito or Meitantei Conan, which are property of Aoyama Gosho. I obviously can't claim to own Hamlet either, as property of the great Bard himself, but frankly weirder people have been accused of writing his plays._


	3. Act the Second

_Act the Second_

_In Ginzo's office, a month later_

Ginzo glanced over the photographs on his desk with a saddened eye. Saguru and Aoko, playing together as children… but they were children no longer, and Saguru was already making his own place in the world. Aoko, perhaps, would find hers soon, but…

His gaze skipped over a particular photo where a second boy was playing with his children, finishing his letter and handing it to Jii, the old prop manager who was heading to the post office and had offered to drop off Ginzo's letter to Saguru on the way.

"Give Saguru his money and these notes," he requested, sealing the envelope and handing it to Jii. "You shall do marvellous wisely to make enquiry of his behaviour."

"My lord, I did intend it," he said, waving and slipping the envelope into his jacket pocket as he left. Ginzo watched him go, returning his attention to the security cameras. Aoko had kept her vow and seen nothing of Kaito so far as he could tell, but seemingly as a result, Kaito…

He whirled around in his seat as his door banged open. He was shocked to see Aoko standing there, tears in her eyes and a terrified expression on her face. With a sob, she hurled herself into his arms. He held her, rocking her slightly and stroking her hair as though she were still a child. "Aoko, what's the matter?" he asked her softly. She shuddered for a moment, before hiccoughing and speaking.

"Alas, my lord, I have been so afrighted," she whispered fearfully.

"With _what_, in the name of Heaven?" he demanded angrily. Had somebody _done_ something to her? If anybody had harmed his daughter-

"Lord Kaito…" she whispered, and Ginzo involuntarily stiffened. Perhaps Aoko did not notice, as she continued with her account. "As if he had been loosed out of Hell... to speak of _horrors_, he comes before me." She shivered in her father's arms as she remembered his visit; his handsome face had been so blank, so expressionless, eyes that had once brightened her world whenever they had sparkled with mischievous merriment so cold and dead…

"He took me by the wrist…" she remembered quietly, trying to forget how cold his touch had been, as if he were as dead as his father… "And raised a sigh so piteous that it did seem to shatter all his being. He seemed to find his way without eyes."

"I will go seek the magician," Ginzo decided, wiping his daughter's eyes. "This is the very ecstasy of love! Have you given him any hard words of late?"

"N-no, my good lord," she swore, looking up at him through still-tearful eyes. He hugged her once more.

"I feared he did but trifle," he said. "Come, go we to the magician."

Still sniffling and wiping her eyes, Aoko dutifully followed.

_Snake' office_

The two men stood silently before the large oak desk where Snake said, welcoming them with a broad smile. One tall and thin, with long blond hair, the other shorter and stockier with close-cropped black hair, the two men were physical opposites yet just as close friends as the twins Kaito and Shinichi- but not so close friends to _them_.

"Welcome, dear Gin and Vodka," Snake said warmly. Minami nodded and smiled at them from behind his desk. Snake, meanwhile, got straight to the point. "Something have you heard of Kaito's transformation. I entreat you both to gather whether aught to us unknown afflicts him."

"Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you," Minami said quietly. "You visitation shall receive such thanks as fits an emperor's remembrance."

"We both obey, and lay our services freely at your feet," the two men said in unison. Gin's voice was cold but smooth; Vodka's voice was lower and rougher.

"I beseech you instantly to visit my too much changed son," Minami begged sadly. As her son's sanity had drained, so too had her smiles.

The two left without saying another word. As they left the office, Ginzo appeared.

"The officers from Tokyo, my good lord, are joyfully returned," he said. Snake smiled.

"Thou still hast been the father of good news," he praised him.

"Have I, my lord?" Ginzo asked, oddly sad. "This brain of mine hunts so sure that I have found the very cause of Kaito's lunacy."

Minami gasped; Snake smiled coldly. "Oh, speak of that!" he said with a malicious glee. "I do long to hear."

"Give first admittance to the officers," Ginzo said, stepping outside to fetch Sato and Takagi.

"He tells me, my sweet wife, that he hath found the source of all your son's distemper," Snake mused quietly to Minami.

"I doubt it is no other than his father's death and our _overhasty_ marriage," she sighed sadly, rubbing her temples. Snake only smiled at her, attempting to cheer her.

Sato and Takagi entered the officer, standing to attention as police officers did near the door.

"Welcome, good friends," Snake greeted them warmly. "What from our brother Tokyo?"

"Most fair return of greetings and desires," Takagi said. "The investigation has proceeded well and should suppress the young magician's levies against yourself." He handed a public report to Snake to peruse at his leisure.

"Sanada makes vow never more to give th'assay of arms against you," Sato promised, though she looked slightly like this investigation was distasteful to her.

"We thank you for your labour," Snake said with a broad smile. "At night we'll feast together." The two left without further comment.

"This business is well ended," Ginzo commented neutrally. Then his visage became stern once more. "My liege and madam…" he went over to close the door behind the departed Sato and Takagi, giving them privacy. "Since brevity is the soul of wit, your noble son is mad… and now remains that we find out the cause of this effect." He placed a letter on Snake's desk. "I have a daughter who, in her duty and obedience, hath given me this letter…" Snake looked at him quizzically for a moment, before reaching out and picking up the letter.

_To the celestial, and my soul's idol, the most beautified Aoko…_

_Doubt that the stars are fire,_

_Doubt that the sun doth move,_

_Doubt truth to be a liar,_

_But never doubt I love._

_O dear Aoko, I love thee best… o most best, believe it._

_Adieu._

Minami bit her lip as she read her son's outpouring of passion. She knew that Ginzo had rejected the relationship, but if such passions were true, then depriving her son of contact with Aoko… was it truly enough to drive him so deeply into madness?

"But how hath she received his love?" Snake asked with an odd smile.

"When I had seen this hot love," Ginzo said sternly, "I went round to work, and thus did I bespeak… "Lord Kaito is a magician out of thy star. This _must not_ be." And he, repulsed, fell into a sadness, thence into a weakness, and by this declension into the madness wherein now he raves."

"Do you think it is this?" Snake asked Minami.

"It may be, very likely," she mused quietly.

"I will find where truth is hid," Ginzo promised, a steely glint in his eye as he always got when determined about something.

_The lobby of the playhouse_

"You know sometimes he walks for hours here in the lobby?" Ginzo asked. He had seen as much on the security cameras. He did not often pay much attention to the cameras in the hours when the playhouse was closed- during the working year, it was always closed during the daytime, empty of the crowds though still filled with the actors, dancers and musicians who daily practiced their next show.

"So he does indeed," Minami remembered, having seen him there more than once in passing.

"At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him," Ginzo revealed, "be you and I behind to mark the encounter." Suddenly, footsteps echoed throughout the lobby; the floors were marbled here, unlike the carpeted halls, and thus they heard Kaito enter the lobby before they saw him. He did not see them, his nose buried in a book.

"Look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading," Ginzo whispered, pushing Minami and Snake back, out of Kaito's sight, before approaching him. He allowed his footsteps too to echo; Kaito glanced up at him with sharp eyes.

"Do you know me, my lord?" Ginzo asked tentatively. In an instant, Kaito's manner changed; he smiled broadly, spreading his arms expansively.

"Excellent well!" he cheered. "You are a _baker_!"

"Not I, my lord," Ginzo said carefully. Kaito cupped his chin in his hand thoughtfully, then shrugged and turned away.

"Then I would you were so honest a man," he sighed, before turning back, all smiles again, hands clasping his book to his chest. "Have you a daughter? Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive."

It took Ginzo a lot of self-control to remain impassive. Kaito merely opened his book again at some random point which did not look anywhere near where he had been reading before, reading on with a faint smile.

"He is far gone," Ginzo murmured to himself, though Kaito no longer seemed to hear or notice him, "and truly, in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very near this. What do you read, my lord?" he asked, louder, trying to remain calm and friendly.

"Words, words, words," Kaito sighed frivolously, waving one hand in the air.

"_Though this be madness, yet there is method in it,_" Ginzo thought. "Will you walk out of the air, my lord?"

"Into my grave?" Kaito shot back sharply, before walking on.

"Indeed that _is_ out of the air," Ginzo mused darkly. "How pregnant sometimes his replies are! I will leave him and contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter." He raised his voice again to bid Kaito goodbye. "Fare you well, my lord!" he hurriedly strode off. Kaito, though playing dumb, could hear him muttering to his mother and uncle, whom he had seen watching the entire encounter out of the corner of his eye.

"_These tedious old _fools!" he growled within his mind, while keeping his face blank and simple. He nearly growled aloud when he heard two sets of footsteps approaching, but relaxed slightly when he heard the voices which called out to him.

"God save you, sir."

"Mine honoured lord!"

"Gin, Vodka," he said with a smile, turning to face his friends, "how do ye both?"

They retired to the bar; Kaito got free drinks, of course. They relaxed in the corner, catching up, Kaito careful to talk himself in odd circles.

"What have you, my good friends, deserved as the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?" he enquired.

"Prison, my lord?" Vodka asked curiously. Gin, generally the more quiet of the two, simply sipped his drink.

"Denmark's a prison," Kaito said, tapping his fingers on his glass, seeming to drift off for a moment, tapping at different heights to draw different sounds.

"Why then your ambition makes it one," Gin commented softly. "'Tis too narrow for your mind."

"What make you at Elsinore?" Kaito asked, lazily but perceptively, still seemingly engrossed in the echoes of his fingernails on his glass. He caught the briefest glance between the two, the barest pause.

"To visit you, my lord, no other occasion," Vodka insisted. Kaito smiled wickedly.

"I _know_ the good magician and lady have sent for you," he countered sharply.

"To what end, my lord?" Gin responded silkily. He always was the better poker player, but none could match Kaito.

"I will tell you why…" he said, allowing his eyes to glaze, his fingers to still. "I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my mirth. It goes so heavily with my disposition that this earth seems to me sterile… the air, foul and pestilent." He heaved a heavy sigh, as if to blow such foul air away from himself, tipping his head back in a loose motion, like a doll, to stare at the ceiling. "What a piece of work is a man. In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!" his smile faded slowly, calculatedly. "And yet man delights not me- no, nor woman neither." He tried to ignore the echo of a giggle in his mind and the flash of brown hair and flowers that accompanied it.

The giggle was replaced by a laugh, deeper and less pleasant to his ears. He glanced across the table at Gin and Vodka, who both now wore restrained smiles.

"Why did you laugh when I said "man delights not me"?" he demanded.

"My lord," Gin said, "if you delight not in man, what entertainment shall the players receive from you?"

Kaito paused. There were many players about Elsinore, each offering their own version of entertainment. "What players are they?"

"Those you were wont to take such delight in," Vodka laughed, holding out a flier. Kaito took it, turning it around to read it. It advertised a group of Broadway players who were now travelling Japan with their shows. They had evidently booked a date at the Elsinore- tomorrow night, in fact. They ought, then, to arrive tonight to inspect the set and stage.

"How chances it they travel?" he mused, turning a page of the flier to reveal a photo of a group of men and woman in European mediaeval dress.

"There are the players," Gin said. Kaito abruptly stood and, still reading the flier, wandered away towards the lobby. The two hurriedly rose and followed.

"Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore," Kaito said pleasantly, then looked up from his flier and raised a warning finger. "But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived."

"In what, my dear lord?" Gin asked, Vodka merely looking confused.

"I am but mad north-north-west!" Kaito laughed, a mad grin flashing across his face as he popped a deck of cards into existence, let them fly through the air in a complex shuffling pattern, before vanishing once more. "When the wind is southerly…. I know a hawk from a handsaw."

The looks on Gin and Vodka's faces clearly said _just nod and smile_.

Footsteps, many of them, rang out in the lobby as a group recognizable as the people from the flier, though in modern dress, entered the lobby, led by Ginzo, who paused when he saw Kaito before making a beeline for him.

"That great baby you see there comes to tell me of the players," Kaito stage-whispered to Gin and Vodka. "Mark it."

"The actors are come hither, my lord," Ginzo said, beckoning to the group. "The best actors in the world for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, or poem unlimited." The group presented themselves with small formal bows.

"You are welcome, masters," Kaito said warmly. "I am glad to see thee well. We'll have a taste of your quality, a passionate speech."

"What speech, my lord?" the young woman at the head of the group asked in a rather pleasant, musical voice. She had very long, dark hair and reminded him a little of Aoko.

"I heard thee speak me a speech once," Kaito remembered of a play he had seen long ago. "Aeneas' tale to Dido, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter."

She smiled and nodded, closing her eyes for a moment as she recalled the tragic story, then launched into a passionate tale.

"… _But if the gods themselves did see her then, when she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport in mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, the instant burst of clamour that she made, unless things mortal move them not at all, would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, and passion in the gods…_"

"This is too long," Ginzo grumbled after some time. "Look, she has tears in her eyes." It was true; the passion and tragedy of the tale had clearly overwhelmed the girl, as tears were beginning to leak down her cheeks. Kaito nodded, and she wiped them away, apologizing.

"We'll hear a play tomorrow," Kaito said, clapping his hands. "Can you play _The Murder Of Gonzago?_"

"Ay, my lord," she nodded.

"Very well," Kaito said with a broad smile, wandering away. "I'll leave you till night."

The Elsinore was an old, western-style playhouse; that is, built like the Labyrinth itself, and containing, Kaito thought, far worse creatures. It was not difficult to lose Gin and Vodka. He sat on some of the statuary on the roof; not the safest position, not a place that the building was designed to allow a person to reach, but Kaito liked it up there anyway. With the wind in his hair, it felt as if his father's spirit may be near once more. Plus, with nobody capable of intruding on his thoughts, he could drop all masks, just for a time.

"Is it not monstrous," he mused, "that this player here, but in a fiction, could force her soul to tears in her eyes? What would she do, had she the motive and the cue for passion that I have?" he looked down at his hands, tightly gripping a statue, not for balance but as an unconscious declaration of rage. "Ye I, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, must unpack my heart with words! For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak." He blinked, gasping to the empty air as the realization hit him, the wild idea that quickly took rational form.

"I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle," he plotted. "I'll observe his looks. The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

_*bows* thou art most kind, noble Hydok. I pray this is sufficient to thine entertainment._

_I do not claim to own Magic Kaito or Meitantei Conan, which are property of Aoyama Gosho. I obviously can't claim to own Hamlet either, as property of the great Bard himself, but frankly weirder people have been accused of writing his plays._


	4. Act the Third

_Act the Third_

_Snake's office_

Aoko shuffled her feet nervously in a corner of the room when Gin and Vodka entered. She did not want to be present for these secrets, this plotting, but she longed to help Kaito. He was acting so strangely… was it truly her fault for obeying her father's dictates not to see him?

"… and can you by no drift get from him why he puts on dangerous lunacy?" Snake demanded of the pair. Minami was also wringing her hands nervously, pacing backwards and forwards behind his chair. Ginzo stood quietly by Snake's side.

"From what cause he will by no means speak," Gin said coolly, displaying none of the restlessness or worry that seemed to have gripped everyone else in Elsinore.

"A crafty madness keeps aloof when we would bring him to some confession of his state," Vodka explained nervously. He could never keep as calm as his friend.

"Did you assay him to any pastime?" Minami asked quietly, her voice seeming to Doppler slightly as she turned and paced.

"Madam, certain players are about the court," Gin said, cutting off Vodka's nervous mutterings. "They have already order this night to play before him."

"He beseeched me to entreat your majesties to hear and see the matter," Ginzo put in. Aoko chewed her lip. Would she be allowed to see the play too? Would she be able to sneak a few words with Kaito?

"Good gentlemen," Snake said with a courteous if slightly condescending smile, "Drive his purpose on to these delights." The two bowed and left. After a moment, Snake continued to the rest of them, "We have sent for Kaito that he may here affront Aoko. Her father and myself, seeing unseen, may judge if it be the affliction of his love or no that thus he suffers for." Aoko clenched her fists and the thought of being permitted to talk to Kaito. She longed to do so, but for the purposes of deceiving and spying on him…

"Aoko, I do wish that your good beauties be the cause of Kaito's wildness," Minami said softly as she ushered Aoko to the door to walk the corridor outside as Snake extinguished all light in the office, making it appear empty.

"Madam, I wish it may," she murmured back, before blinking in surprise as her father handed her a novel.

"Aoko, walk you here," he said. "Read on this book that show of such may colour your loneliness."

The door to the stairwell creaked.

"I hear him coming," Ginzo murmured. "Let's withdraw, my lord." He shut the office door behind him, leaving Aoko alone to face Kaito. Her fists clenched nervously around the covers of the book.

She had barely even seen him in her efforts to avoid speaking to him. Seeing him again, after so long, was like a shock to her system; like a fresh hit of a drug that she hadn't quite broken her addiction to. But he was changed, she could see, frighteningly warped. His laughing eyes were dark, as if hidden behind a veil, and his entire face was flat and expressionless. He seemed almost like some twisted, realistic parody of a Greek tragedy mask.

Kaito barely noticed her; he was too absorbed within his own mind, his own dark thoughts. Perhaps he was mad after all.

_To be or not to be; that is the question. _

He fingered the handle of his gun in his pocket. He had made the secret attachments; while he intended to end Snake in a manner of justice, sometimes this seemed impossible.

_Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles- and by opposing, _end _them?_

To do the deed otherwise would make him a murderer like _him_. He could not live with that, even though it must be done one way or another.

_To die, to sleep, no more! And by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd._

Sometimes he thought of escaping the duty entirely; but surely then he would be but another ghost, wandering like his father, forcing the executioner's axe into the hand of another. Good Saguru, noble Shinichi… he could not force them to bear his load.

_To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub! For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause._

What fantastic dreams would come in that eternal sleep? But surely, were the dreams more fantastic, then the nightmares would be correspondingly worse. He would believe that, had his life not transformed into the worst nightmare imaginable.

_But that dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all._

Was that what it came down to? But his death was no issue at all to him; he had no fear of Hell for his quest. Without those now so-flimsy barriers, it seemed that the world had opened before him.

_And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action._

So if he feared neither death nor Hell, why did he not simply stride into Snake's office and shoot him now? Something else held him back; perhaps what he feared remained not in the next world, but this one…?

Suddenly, through the haze that had descended over his sight as he descended into deep contemplation, he caught a pair of deep blue eyes, penetrating through the fog. He looked up, hiding his surprise.

"The fair Aoko!" he exclaimed pleasantly.

"My lord…" Her voice was faint and dry. He felt that it must have been years since he had seen her last, and she did not look well; pale and drawn, as if she were worrying too much to eat or sleep. He felt a pang in his heart as he knew that he was the cause of her pain; his breath constricted as he knew that he must only hurt her more, air catching in his throat as if attempting to stop him.

She swallowed, speaking again as she pulled a letter from her book. "My lord, I have remembrances of yours."

Kaito stared down at the letter silently for a long moment. It was one of his letters to her, professing undying love; from an innocent time in Wittenberg where all he had thought of was coming home to her. It seemed a lifetime ago.

"Are you honest?" he asked softly. She stared at him, confusion marring her pretty features.

"My lord…?"

"Are you fair?" he pressed.

"What means your lordship?" she asked, confusion and fear evident in her voice. Whatever she had hoped would happen when they could finally speak again, this was not it. But what could he do?

"I did love you once," he said, feeling the lie of the past tense burn his throat and tongue in its passage.

"Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so…" she said, her voice constricted and tearful.

"You should not have believed me!" he yelled. She stepped back, frightened by his sudden anger. "I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences than I have thoughts or time to act them in." he looked away from her, forcing anger to crease his features. "We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us…"

"O help him, you sweet heavens!" he heard her praying desperately. His back turned to her, he took a moment to compose his Poker Face into anger.

"Get thee to a nunnery," he said, gruffly, quietly at first though his voice was to rise. "Go, farewell." She stared at him in dumb confusion. "Of if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know what _monsters_ you make of them!" he was shouting at her now, and though he tried to avoid looking at her he could see tears beginning to slip down her cheeks.

"O heavenly powers, restore him!" she sobbed, trying to wipe her tears away. He forced a harsh laugh, even as his own eyes stung.

"God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. You jig, you amble and you lisp and make your wantonness your ignorance." A cracked, crazy smile crossed his face as he leaned forwards, placing a hand on her cheek, watching her horrified eyes meet his as she froze, trembling. "I hath made me _mad_."

Tears poured freely down her cheeks, dampening his hand as she gasped for air, unable to stop staring at him.

It hurt. God, but it hurt.

"Those that are married already…" he promised in a broken whisper, "all but _one_ shall live." He flung his hand away from her, stalking away down the corridor, hoping that she would not notice that it took all of his strength not to run. As soon as he was two corridors away, well out of sight and unstalked, _then_ he ran.

"Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" Aoko cried, her trembling becoming so violent that she fell to her knees, no longer able to stand, falling to all fours and all but falling prone as she sobbed. "And I, of ladies most _wretched_, that sucked the honey of his vows, now see that noble reason like sweet bells jangled out of tune. Oh, woe is me t'have seen what I have seen…" she fell into incoherence, crying unstoppably. Suddenly warm arms wrapped her; she leaned into her father's embrace, sobbing unrestrainedly into his suit as he tried to comfort her.

"Love?" Snake murmured, coldly watching her cry. "His affections do not that way tend. What he spake was not like madness. There's something in his soul… some danger, which to prevent, he shall with speed to England." He heard Minami's breath hitch as he spoke of sending her son away; thankfully she would never know that he planned for him not to return. "The seas and countries different shall expel this something in his heart," he proclaimed instead.

"Yet do I believe the origin of this grief sprung from neglected love…" Ginzo murmured, picking up Aoko, still incapacitated by tears, to take her back to her room.

"Let his queen-mother all alone entreat him to show his griefs," Snake suggested to Minami.

"I'll be placed in the ear of all their conference," Ginzo offered. Minami nodded silently.

"Madness in great ones must _not_ unwatched go," Snake murmured. Aoko said nothing as her father carried her away.

The wind blowing over the roof of the Elsinore carried away lonely, pain-laced sobs.

_Backstage of the main theatre_

"…. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you," Kaito continued. "Do not saw the air too much with your hand."

"I warrant your honour," Ran said, though out of genuine interest in his advice or mere manners he could not tell. She was the dark-haired girl who had spoken so passionately at his request for a demonstration, and as it transpired she was the head of the troupe, their Leading Lady. She would play the queen- a vital role to Kaito's plan.

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action," he went on regardless. "The purpose of playing is to hold the mirror up to nature… to show virtue her own feature." It was then that he noticed that Ginzo had appeared at the back of the group of actors. Suddenly energetic, he leapt up and clapped his hands.

"Go, make you ready!" He called. The actors, free at last, scurried off to get into their costumes. Kaito strode over to Ginzo, rubbing his hands jovially. "Will the magician hear this piece?" he asked.

"The lady too," Ginzo promised. Kaito nodded, then subsequently ignored him as he caught sight of another figure entering the room.

"What ho, Shinichi!"

They immediately departed to a private box. The theatre was beginning to fill up with patrons to see the play. Kaito and Shinichi had to lean close to hear each other over the babble.

"There is a play tonight before the magician," Kaito confided, gesturing to the empty chairs set out for his mother and uncle. "One scene of it comes near the circumstance which have told thee of my father's death. Observe mine uncle. After, we will both our judgements join…" Shinichi paled but nodded in understanding.

"Well, my lord," he agreed. They fell silent as Snake and Minami entered the box.

"How fares our cousin Kaito?" Snake greeted with false kindness.

"Excellent!" Kaito cried enthusiastically. "I eat the air, promise-crammed."

"I have nothing with this answer, Kaito," Snake said sternly. Kaito only smiled as Ginzo and Aoko entered the box as well.

"My lord, you played once in the university, you say?" he asked Ginzo, now ignoring his uncle. "What did you enact?"

"I did enact Julius Caesar," Ginzo said, a touch proudly. "I was killed in the Capitol… Brutus killed me."

"It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there," Kaito said with a sad shake of the head. Snake and Minami sat in the front row, Ginzo and Aoko in the back. Shinichi waited to see where Kaito would sit before choosing his own.

"Come hither, my good Kaito," Minami beckoned, gesturing to the seat beside her. "Sit by me."

"No, good mother," Kaito waved her off, sitting down next to Aoko instead. "Here's metal more attractive." Aoko rapidly blushed, looking surprised.

"Oh-ho!" Ginzo murmured to Snake. "Do you mark _that_?"

"Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Kaito asked with a wicked grin. Aoko went even redder.

"No, my lord!" she squeaked.

"I mean, my head upon your lap," Kaito laughed, doing just that.

"You are merry, my lord," Aoko said tentatively, her cheeks cooling a little. It was as if Kaito's harsh words of the night before never were.

"What should a man do but be merry?" Kaito asked distantly. "For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within two hours."

"Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord," Aoko reminded him gently.

"So long?" Kaito murmured, almost silently. Then with a heavy sigh and a frivolous wave of the hand, he sat upright again. "Nay then, let the _devil _wear black." He gave a sad little smile. "There's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year…."

He fell silent as the house lights fell, the curtains of the stage drawing open as the opening lines of the play rang out.

"For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!"

They seemed to fall into good cheer as the play began, but soon scenes designed to make them sweat were played out.

"Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too…" called the lead male playing the king, a young man with large eyes and short dark hair by the name of Eisuke, "and thou shalt live in this fair world. For husband shalt thou-"

"In second husband let me be _accursed_," Ran, playing the queen, cut him off passionately. "None _wed_ the second but who _killed_ the first…" Kaito snuck a glance at his mother and drew a dark pleasure to see both her and Snake look deeply uneasy.

"Madam, how like you this play?" he asked quietly.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks," Minami responded shakily. He could see her fists clenching in her lap.

"'Tis deeply sworn," Eisuke said, caressing Ran's face before stepping aside, raising an arm dramatically. "Sweet, leave me here a while. My spirits grow dull. I would beguile the tedious day with sleep."

Kaito narrowed his eyes as the scene that he himself had written- no, his uncle had written it, he had but committed it to paper- approached. Shinichi, growing fearful, watched not the stage but Kaito.

"Sleep rock thy brain," Ran sang, backing away as Eisuke stretched out on the floor in an uncomfortable-looking mockery of sleep. "And never come mischance between us twain!"

Snake was looking visibly ill now as flat wooden trees were propped up around the sleeping king, separating him from the rest of the stage as another male figure appeared. "What do you call the play?" he asked nervously.

"The _Mousetrap_," Kaito said softly, dangerously. "This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king." He gestured to the young man soliloquizing onstage.

"You are a good chorus, my lord," Aoko said, smiling sweetly. For a moment, Kaito was thrown off by her smile; how could he be daring to hurt her for his own petty plan? But his resolve was back an instant later, brought back by the sneaking figure to appear onstage with a syringe.

"Thy natural magic and dire property on wholesome life usurp thee immediately," he sang nastily, making to pour some poison into the sleeping king's ear.

"He _poisons_ him in the garden for his estate," Kaito said, his voice still soft and low but growing more mocking by the minute. "You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see them all; Aoko and Ginzo, unmoved, unrealizing; Shinichi, his gaze flickering around from Snake to Minami uncertainly; and the happy couple themselves, Minami looking unsettled and Snake looking nothing short of terrified. Grasping the arms of his chair with shaking hands, he stood.

"The magician rises…" Aoko commented, confused.

"What, _frighted_ with false fire?" Kaito commented maliciously.

"How fares my lord?" Minami asked worriedly, reaching for her husband.

"Give me some light," he cried, thrusting her hand aside and stalking off. "_Away!_"

Kaito and Shinichi exchanged looks, one nervous, the other cold and certain.

_Kaito's room_

"O good Shinichi, I'll take the ghost's word for a_ thousand_ pounds," Kaito said happily, pressing his mobile to his ear. "Didst perceive?"

"Very well, my lord," Shinichi's voice said out of the little device. He had had to leave the Elsinore at the end of the show, but he had called Kaito straight away to discuss events. They both knew well what Snake's reactions had meant.

"Upon the talk of the poisoning?" Kaito asked with a grin that his friend could not see, but could as good as hear.

"I did _very _well note him," Shinichi agreed. Kaito was about to agree when he heard a knock on the door.

"The lady, your mother, hath sent me to you," Vodka's muffled voice called.

"Your behaviour hath struck her into amazement," Gin added. Kaito muttered a farewell and hung up before opening the door.

"Oh, wonderful son, that can so _astonish_ a mother!" Kaito commented sarcastically as he opened the door.

"She desires to speak with you, ere you go to bed," Gin sad, stepping slowly into the room. Vodka too looked nervous as to Kaito's wildly unpredictable reactions.

"We shall obey, were she _ten times_ our mother," Kaito said with a little bow. He made to step past them when Gin stopped him.

"Good my lord, what _is _your cause of distemper?" he pressed shrewdly. Kaito paused thoughtfully, before stepping over to his desk and pulling a flute out of one of the drawers. He played a brief, flowing tune. Gin and Vodka exchanged confused glances. What answer were they supposed to divine from the music? They could not even identify the tune.

"Will you play upon this pipe?" Kaito asked quietly, with an odd smile on his face as he proffered the instrument to Vodka.

"My lord, I cannot," Vodka insisted, waving his hands frantically.

"I do beseech you," Kaito said, still wearing that strange smile, pressing the flute upon him, "'Tis as easy as _lying_."

"I have not the skill," Vodka said, made nervous by the sudden sharpness in Kaito's tone. Gin narrowed his eyes.

Kaito's face suddenly changed, the light smile giving way to a terrible rage. "Why do you think that _I_ am easier to be played on than a pipe?!" he yelled, clutching the flute tightly before throwing it at them, pushing past them as they ducked. "Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you _cannot_ play upon me!" He stormed away, and though they chased after him there were none swifter then Kuroba Kaito. Soon he was wandering the corridors alone, having completely lost the hapless pair. It was then that he ran into Ginzo.

"My lord, the lady would speak with you," he said, reaching out to stop Kaito. Kaito looked past him, out of the window and into the dark night sky.

"Do you see that cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?" he said dreamily.

"It's like a camel indeed…" Ginzo said, a little thrown off by the random change in subject.

"Methinks it is like a weasel," Kaito said thoughtfully.

"It is backed like a weasel…" Ginzo said tentatively. Kaito quirked a little smile.

"Or like a whale?" he said.

"Very like a whale," Ginzo said with the careful air of one who is not going to contradict a person whom they suspect to be deeply mental. Kaito almost laughed.

"Then will I come to my mother by and by…" he said, pulling away from him and wandering off. He could feel his resolve cracking as he wandered alone, however. "'Tis now the very witching time of night," he murmured, looking out again at the full moon. "Now could I drink hot blood. Now to my mother…" he clenched one hand over his heart and the other around the handle of his gun. "O heart, lose not thy nature. I will _speak_ daggers to her, but _use_ none."

Still, he could not quite bring his hand from his gun.

_Snake's Office_

"I like him not," Snake growled. "Nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range." Gin and Vodka, still a little rattled, only nodded. "Therefore, prepare you. And he to England shall along with you."

"Most holy and religious it is to keep those many safe that live and feed upon your majesty," Vodka said loyally.

"Never alone did the magician sigh, but with a general groan," Gin added quietly.

"Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage," Snake said, dismissing them. They left to pack, passing Ginzo as he entered the office.

"My lord, he's going to his mother's closet," Ginzo said. "Behind the arras I'll convey myself to hear the process. I'll call upon you ere you go to bed and tell you what I know."

"Thanks, dear my lord," Snake said quietly, waving him off. Ginzo left, looking a little worried at Snake's subdued demeanour. Snake stared at his late brother's portrait through glazed eyes.

"Pray can I not," he said to the air. "My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent… Oh, what form of prayer can forgive me my foul murder?!" he fell to his knees in despair. "_Help, Angels!_" he cried. "Bow, stubborn knees, and heart, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe. All may be well…"

He did not see Kaito freeze as he passed his doorway.

"Now might I do it, now he is praying, and so he goes to _heaven_!" He hissed, drawing his gun and stepping towards the door. "He took my father full of his crimes." He raised his gun, clicking a bullet into the chamber, and took aim. It was barely six feet between him and Snake, and his uncle had not seen him. He could end him in a heartbeat…

"_No_…"

He froze as the thought- from him, or the voice of another?- echoed in his head.

"_When he is drunk or in his rage, or in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed, then _his_ soul may be damned…_"

He lowered his gun and walked away, tears running down his cheeks.

_Minami's room_

"Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with," Ginzo instructed the distant Minami, "and that your grace hath stood between much heat and him." Minami did not respond, but seemed to come to life when she heard footsteps in the hall.

"Withdraw, I hear him coming," she commanded. Ginzo slipped behind the sliding door of the cupboard, out of sight. Minami rose to answer the door and let Kaito in.

"Kaito, thou hast thy father much offended," she began. Kaito merely smiled at her, ignoring the reprimand.

"Mother, _you_ have my father much offended," he responded calmly.

"Have you forgot me?!" she demanded. Kaito suddenly spun, filled with anger, and grabbed her arms, pinning her to the wall.

"You are the lady, your husband's _brother's_ wife," he cried. "But- would you were not so- you are my _mother_. I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you."

"What wilt thou do? _Murder_ me?!" Minami shrieked, trying to cover her fear with anger. "Help! _Help!_"

Ginzo, behind the screen, instantly grabbed his mobile to call the security guards. "What ho! _Help!_" He yelled.

"What now, a_ rat_?" Kaito cried, hearing him. He turned, whipping out his gun. "Is is the _magician_?" he fired repeatedly, rapidly, past Minami and into the cupboard door. There was a moment of stillness, and silence, then slowly the door slid aside under a shaking, bloodstained hand.

"O!" Ginzo gasped, trying to step out, meeting Kaito's horrified eyes as blood poured from multiple wounds in his stomach and chest. "I am slain!" and then, true to his word, he collapsed forwards, falling still and silent, crimson blood pooling around him. Kaito and Minami could only stare at him for a long moment. Then Minami began to sob.

"Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!" she wept, staggering away from the corpse. Kaito, suddenly cold once more, strode towards it.

"Almost as bad as kill a king and marry with his brother," he said quietly, reaching down to turn off Ginzo's mobile phone, from which the sounds of frantically shouting guards could be heard. Then he turned back to his mother, pulling over a chair.

"Sit you down," he demanded, pushing her into the chair not entirely gently, "and let me wring your heart." He pulled out a pair of photographs. One was deeply beloved to him; it showed him at perhaps eight years old, having proudly just produced a dove from his sleeve, the white bird hovering just over his hands. Behind him, a warm, proud smile on his face, was Toichi Kuroba.

"Look here upon this picture," he said, tapping his father's face. "This was your _husband_. Look you now what follows." He tucked the photo away and pulled out another, of his uncle. "Have you _eyes?!_" She closed them and looked away. "You _cannot_ call it love at your age." He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look back at him. "O shame, where is thy blush?"

"O Kaito, speak no more," she begged him in a broken, teary voice.

He only snarled at her, hissing "A _murderer_ and a _villain_ that is not the _twentieth_ part of your precedent lord." Suddenly his gaze softened, growing vague and distant, staring at something behind her.

"Alas, he's mad," Minami whispered. He did not appear to hear her.

"What _would_ you, gracious figure?" he said distantly. He could see Toichi, hovering nearby, watching their confrontation with cold eyes.

"_Do not forget…_" his faint voice whispered in the air, "_Speak to her, Kaito._"

"Whereon do you look?" Minami asked as Kaito stepped away from her, towards Toichi. He turned to her with his face twisted with grief.

"On him, on him!" he cried. "Look you how _pale_ he glares…" he looked at some empty space near the door. "Do you see nothing there?"

"Nothing at all," Minami said firmly. "Yes all that is, I see."

Kaito fell to his knees as Toichi vanished before him. "Why, look you there!" He cried desperately. "Look where he goes…"

Minami could feel tears pouring down her cheeks as she watched her son change so much, yet always remain the same- always strange, always mad. "This is the very coinage of your brain," she said softly, putting her arms around him as she tried to comfort her son. He stiffened.

"It is _not_ madness," he whispered. Then he pushed her away so violently that she hit the wall. "Mother, for love of grace, confess yourself to Heaven! _Repent_ what's past! _Avoid_ what is to come!" he cried. Minami lashed out, slapping him hard across the face, as if it would snap him out of his insanity.

"O Kaito, thou hast cleft my heart in _twain_," she sobbed. His head snapped to the side when her palm struck it and he did not look up again.

"O throw away the worser part of it," he murmured. "Go not to mine uncle's bed… assume a virtue if you have it not."

"What shall I do?" she sobbed, slipping down the wall until she sat crying in an ungainly heap on the floor.

"Not this…" Kaito muttered. "_I am not in madness, but mad in craft,_" he reminded himself, then wondered why he should have to.

"Be thou assured," his mother whispered, "I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me."

"I must to England," Kaito said abruptly. "You know that?"

"I had forgot," Minami said softly. Kaito stood up, towering over her, striding past her without looking at her.

"I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room," he said. Minami could not bring herself to move, so she could only hear the heavy thumps and drips of blood as Kaito hauled Ginzo's body away. "Good night, mother."

She sat there alone for a very long time.

_Sorry this act took so long to get around to. Must stop being lazy! It's getting to the good bits where everyone dies! XDXD_

_I do not claim to own Magic Kaito or Meitantei Conan, which are property of Aoyama Gosho. I obviously can't claim to own Hamlet either, as property of the great Bard himself, but frankly weirder people have been accused of writing his plays._


	5. Act the Fourth

_Act the Fourth_

_Snake's office_

"How does Kaito?" Snake asked as Minami staggered into his office, pale-faced, and collapsed heavily into a chair.

"Mad as the seas and the wind," she whispered. "He whips out his rapier and cries "A rat, A rat!" and kills the unseen good old man." She buried her face in her hands with a sob. Snake's fists clenched as he realized what Kaito had done.

"Oh, heavy deed!" he growled. "How liberty is full of threats to all- to yourself, to us, to _everyone_." Minami said nothing, though she must have realized his intent. "We will ship him hence, and this vile deed we must with all our majesty and skill excuse." There was a knock on the door and Gin entered silently.

"Kaito in madness hath Ginzo slain," Snake said without turning to him. Minami saw the normally unflappable man's look of shock. "Go seek him out. Bring the body into the chapel." Gin bowed, composing himself, and left again without saying a word. Snake sighed heavily before reaching a hand to Minami to help her up. "Come, Minami. My soul is full of discord and dismay."

Gin found Kaito sitting idly on the front steps of the Elsinore, ignorant of the cold wind.

"What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?" he asked bluntly. Kaito giggled a little, a mad sound.

"The body is with the magician," he said pleasantly, "but the magician is _not_ with the body. The magician is a thing…"

"A "thing", my lord?" Gin interrupted.

"Of nothing," Kaito said, suddenly stern. "Bring me to him."

"How dangerous is it that this _man_ goes loose!" Snake growled in the foyer, watching the younger men's conversation through the glass doors. Minami merely watched him with vague eyes. She had been dull and listless since hers and Hamlet's argument.

"Where the dead body is, my lord," Gin said, approaching him, "We cannot get it from him."

"Bring him before me," Snake demanded. Gin turned to fetch Kaito, but was surprised to find that he had followed him in. He glared at Snake, the two locking eyes with an almost audible clang.

"Now Kaito," Snake said sternly, "Where's Ginzo?"

"At supper," Kaito said unhelpfully.

"At supper!" Snake exclaimed. "Where?"

"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten," Kaito replied with a silly little grin, looking away from his uncle and staring at the ceiling with an expression of deep interest.

"Kaito, this deed of thine must send thee hence with fiery quickness," Snake declared angrily. "Everything is bent for England." Kaito looked back at him with a wider grin.

"Good! Come, for England," he said cheerily, walking past them, presumably to go pack. As he passed Minami he whispered "Farewell, dear mother." Then with a little wave, he trotted away. Minami watched him go with tears on her cheeks.

_Snake's Office, the next day_

"Tempt him with speed aboard," Snake advised Gin and Vodka. "I'll have him hence tonight. Pray make you to England…" he handed them a letter and watched the pair depart. "And England, effect the present _death_ of Kaito!" he prayed quietly to himself. "Do it, England! In my blood he rages and thou must cure me…"

_Two weeks later_

"I will _not_ speak with her," Minami said firmly.

"Her mood will _needs_ be pitied," Shinichi begged her, almost running to keep up with her fast stride through the corridors of the Elsinore. "She speaks much of her father, and beats her heart… speaks things in doubt that carry but _half_ sense!" He trailed off as the sound of singing approaching them, warbling and sad. A moment later, Aoko danced out of a doorway, ignoring them as she sang.

"How now, Aoko?" Shinichi said tentatively.

"He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone," she sang lightly as response, fingering a necklace of daisies that she had woven together. She kept sneaking out despite the doctor requesting that she get some bed rest and calm down. "At his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone…"

Minami stared at the girl in faint horror. Since her father's death, she had descended into madness just as Kaito had. Minami jumped when she felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Snake watching the girl with a solemn expression.

"Alas, look here, my lord," Minami whispered, gesturing to Aoko. Snake stepped forwards. Aoko had stopped spinning, gazing dreamily at their general vicinity. Minami wondered if she could see any of them.

"How do ye, pretty lady?" Snake said loudly. She tipped her head a little, seeming to regard him, before grinning brightly again.

"They say the owl was a baker's daughter," she sang. "Lord, we know what we _are_, but know not what we may be."

"How long hath she been thus?" Snake asked quietly. Aoko appeared to have heard him, because she suddenly slumped over, her back to them.

"I cannot choose but weep," she said shakily, "to think they should lay him in the cold ground." She whipped around to face them again, her wild hair flying and her eyes full of fire. "My brother shall know of it!" she screamed angrily, pointing an accusing finger at Snake. Then, as quickly as the switching on of a light, her face was light and smiling once more as the accusing finger simply became an indicative one, now pointing at Shinichi. "Come," she beckoned, "My coach!" Shinichi wordlessly offered his arm to her and gently led her away. "Good night, ladies, good night," Aoko called behind her.

Minami and Snake could only stare, wondering what had just happened.

"Oh, this is the poison of deep grief," Snake said once the pair were out of sight, turning and wandering down to the foyer. "It springs all from her father's death. O Minami, when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. First, her father slain, next, your son gone… the people muddied in their thoughts and whispers for Ginzo's death." Minami sighed wearily at this. Despite their attempts to cover it up as an equipment malfunction, it had become wide knowledge in the local area that Ginzo had been murdered, which was unfortunate since he had been very popular. There had been discontent with the running of the Elsinore of late and the circumstances of Toichi's death, and since the Elsinore was one of Kyoto's most beloved institutions, people would not stand for it for long.

"And poor Aoko divided from herself…" Snake continued sadly, stepping down the stairs. "Last, and as much, her brother is in secret come from France and feeds on pestilent speeches of his father's death. O my dear Minami, this gives me superfluous death…" he rubbed his temples as they stepped into the foyer, when suddenly Shuuichi burst through the front doors, struggling to lock them behind him. A crowd could be heard chanting outside, ramming into the glass doors in an attempt to open them. There seemed to be a hell of a riot in progress.

"What noise is this?" Minami gasped as the noise of the crowd increased at the sight of Snake.

"Guard the door!" Snake demanded as Shuuichi backed away from the locked but cracking doors. "What's the matter!"

"Save yourself, my lord!" Shuuichi yelled, running across the foyer desperately. "You Saguru, in a riotous head, o'erbears your officers. The rabble call him "Lord". They cry "Laertes shall be the magician"!"

There was a mighty _crack_ as the doors gave way and the mob swarmed in behind Saguru, the once polite and refined young man contorted with fury as he strode towards Snake.

"O thou _vile_ magician," he snarled, "Give me my father!"

"Calmly, good Saguru," Minami begged, stepping in front of Snake and trying to restrain the furious young man.

"Let him _go_, Minami," Snake said sharply as the crowd surrounded them. "Tell me, Saguru, why thou art thus incensed."

Saguru closed his eyes, seeming to calm himself for a moment, before snapping them open and demanding, "where's my _father_?"

"Dead," Snake said solemnly. The crowd booed and hissed at him. There were signs proclaiming evil and illegal business practices, hostile takeovers, murder. Minami was in tears.

"But not by him!" she sobbed desperately to Saguru.

"How _came_ he dead?" Saguru demanded. "Let come what comes, I'll be revenged most _thoroughly_ for my father!"

Snake smiled. There was too much anger and hatred among the people here for it to be defused safely. They needed a target.

And he could give them one.

"If you desire to know the certainty," he said calmly, "I am innocent of your father's death, and am most sensible in grief for it." All he had to do was show him the security tapes…

Minami saw his smile, and saw the angry crowd, and felt the bottom drop out of her world as she realized what Snake had planned. The feeling was echoed by faint singing that drifted towards them.

"How now?" Saguru said, gesturing for the crowd to fall silent as he strained his ears to recognize the familiar voice. "What noise is that?"

They all saw Aoko skipping along the road outside, headed towards the park, having evidently slipped Shinichi's watch. They stared in horror at her vacant eyes and twisted smile.

"O heat, dry up my brains!" Saguru gasped, stepping towards the doors, then bursting through the crowds to run after his sister. "Sweet Aoko!" he called after her. "Is't _possible_ a young maid's _wits_ should be as mortal as an old man's _life_?!"

He caught up with her a little way into the park. He could hear distant footsteps as the rioters, thrown off-balance, slipped away or followed to see what would happen now. He ignored them, catching his sister's arm as she knelt to pick at flowers. She turned with a giggle to hand some to him.

"There's rosemary-that's for remembrance," she said in a lilting tone, handing over more flowers. "And there is pansies- that's for thoughts." She broke away from him, kneeling to pick more flowers. "There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." Her happy smile faded, her eyes darkening.

"_Hell itself_, she turns to favour and to prettiness," Saguru moaned, frozen as he watched his sister's madness. A tear found its way from his eye, and Aoko reached up to wipe it away.

"Go to thy death-bed," she said softly, "he never will come again." Then she abruptly turned and fled, sobbing, down the path through the park. Saguru tried to follow her but could take no more than a step before his strength faded entirely, a fresh grief striking him, more real than vague rumours of his father's murder.

"Do you see this, o God?" He whispered to nobody. Then there was a supporting arm under his shoulders, leading him back to the Elsinore.

"Saguru," he heard Snake say softly, "I must commune with your grief. Be you content to lend your patience to us, and we shall jointly labour with your soul to give it due content." Minami placed a consoling hand on Saguru's shoulders before running off in search of Aoko.

"His means of death," Saguru spat, "His obscure burial… cry to be heard from _Heaven_ to _Earth_!"

"Where th'offence is, let the great axe fall," Snake swore. "I pray you go with me."

Saguru gritted his teeth at the man's touch but followed.

_Shinichi's private detective agency, Kyoto_

Shinichi twisted the letter thoughtfully in his hands. It had no postmark, no return address, but…

"_I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted,_" he thought, ripping open the envelope, "_If not from Lord Kaito_."

_Shinichi-_

_Ere we were two days at sea, a pirate gave us chase. In the grapple I boarded them, so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy. These good fellows will bring thee where I am._

_Kaito_.

Shinichi stared, dumbstruck, at the text of the letter for a very long time. Then he looked in the envelope again, finding a photograph showing his friend sitting at what appeared to be a bar with a couple of Korean fellows, all raising a glass with big smiles. Shinichi could not help quirking a little smile of his own. That was Kaito all over. The man could probably sweet-talk the Grim Reaper into letting him have another go. He prayed he would not have the opportunity to find out.

He slipped the photograph into his desk drawer, waiting for the day when these men would arrive to lead him to his friend.

_Security room, Elsinore_

"You must put me in your heart for friend," Snake said, rewinding the old security tapes. "He which hath your noble father slain pursued _my_ life."

"But tell me why you proceeded not _against_ these feats," Saguru demanded. Snake gestured to the screen as the tape reached the appropriate moment.

"The lady his mother lives almost by his looks," he said quietly. Saguru stared in horror as onscreen, Kaito turned from his mother, drew his gun and fired repeatedly into a cupboard. Moments later, the sliding door fell aside, and his father collapsed out of into, into a spreading pool of red on the floor. His hands shook until he clenched them into tight fists, his rage growing anew and focusing on a fresh target.

"The other motive why is the great love the general gender bear him," Snake mused.

"And so have I a noble father lost, a sister driven into desperate terms," Saguru hissed angrily. "But my _revenge_ will come."

"Break not your sleeps for that," Snake advised. "You shortly shall hear more. I loved your father, and we love ourself. And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine…" he broke off as Jodie knocked on the door, appearing in the security room. "How now? What news?" he demanded.

"Letters, my lord, from Kaito," she said, handing him the said letter.

_High and mighty,_

_You shall know that I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow shall I recount th'occasions of my sudden and more strange return._

_Kaito_

"What should this mean?" Snake wondered, rattled. "Naked, he says- alone."

"Let him come," Saguru said with a dark smile. "It warms the very sickness in my heart."

"If it be so, Saguru, will you be ruled by me?" Snake asked. "I will work him to an exploit now ripe in my device." Saguru gave a curt nod, prompting him to continue. "Some two months since," Snake explained, "A gentleman of Osaka gave you such a masterly report for art and exercise in your Kendo. This report did Kaito so envenom with _envy_ that he could bur wish your sudden coming o'er to play with him. Kaito returned shall know you are come home. We'll bring you together and wager on your heads…" He left the plan open to Saguru, who followed his train of thought almost to the letter.

"I'll anoint my sword with an unction of a Mountebank," he decided, "So mortal that no virtue can save the thing from _death_ that is but _scratched_."

"If this should fail, our project should have a second," Snake suggested. Almost instantly- far too quickly- he continued, "I _have_ it! When he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him a chalice whereon but sipping…" He broke off, Saguru looking a little thrown off, as Minami suddenly stumbled through the doorway, looking tearful. "How now, sweet Minami?" he asked. Saguru narrowed his eyes as she refused to meet his.

"Y-You're sister's _drowned_, Saguru," she gasped tearfully. Snake froze as Saguru placed a hand on the counter to steady himself, eyes wide and face pale.

"Drowned?" he asked, his voice faint but steady. "Where?"

"A willow grows aslant a brook," Minami wept. "With fantastic garlands did she come to hang, and herself fell in the weeping brook."

Yes, he could _see_ it; a willow growing by the edge of the stream, Aoko climbing up on it like they had when they were children, then slipping, and this time, with no-one to catch her, forgetting how to swim or not caring to…

"Her clothes, mermaid-like, awhile bore her up, which time she chanted snatches of old tunes…" Minami continued sadly. "Till her garments pulled the poor wretch to muddy death."

Saguru gasped rapidly, almost hyperventilating, stifling the sobs which fought to come. "_Too much of water hast thou, poor Aoko, and therefore I forbid my tears…_" Suddenly calm and steady, he walked away from them, wandering out to the park.

"How much I had to do to _calm_ his rage!" Snake complained. "Now fear I this will give it start again…" but though he complained, his face smiled as Saguru's hatred of Kaito grew stronger.

Minami saw him smile. She no longer knew what to think. She no longer knew whether she should think at all.

_And so, two acts in one day! The fifth act is the final act in the play, where pretty much everyone who isn't dead already is due to bite it…_

_I do not claim to own Magic Kaito or Meitantei Conan, which are property of Aoyama Gosho. I obviously can't claim to own Hamlet either, as property of the great Bard himself, but frankly weirder people have been accused of writing his plays._


	6. Act the Fifth

_Act the Fifth_

_A graveyard, several days later_

"In youth, when I did love, did love, methought it was very sweet…" the young man sang happily, thrusting his shovel into the earth as dark as his skin and flinging it away with every sign of enjoyment. "But age, with his stealing steps, hath caught me in his clutch, o methought there was nothing meet."

"Has this fellow no feeling that he sings at grave-making?" Kaito asked aloud, prompting Shinichi to wonder whether the question was rhetorical or not before he continued, "that skull had a tongue in it and could sing once."

"It might, my lord," Shinichi said, unable to think of anything better to say. Shinichi wandered over to hunker down by the pit that the man was digging.

"Whose grave's this, sir?" he asked loudly. The man paused, wiping a little dirt off his hands, and turned merry green eyes on Kaito.

"Mine, sir," he laughed. Kaito smirked.

"I think it be thine, indeed, for _thou_ liest in't," he pointed out. The man only laughed again. "What man dost thou dig it for?" he asked.

"One that was a _woman_, sir," the gravedigger responded, "but rest her soul, she's dead." Shinichi flinched as he wondered how much the gravedigger intended to say- he had not yet told Kaito of Aoko's death. Thankfully, however, Kaito directed the conversation down another path.

"How long hast thou been a grave-maker?" he asked curiously.

"Hmm… it was the very day that young Kaito was born," the gravedigger remembered, "He that was _mad_ and sent into England." Shinichi blanched, gritting his teeth at the insult to his friend, but Kaito raised a hand to silence him with an odd smile.

"Why sent into England?" he pressed instead.

"Why, because there the men are as mad as he!" The gravedigger crowed, tapping his forehead and bursting into riotous laughter. Shinichi almost growled aloud, but Kaito, oddly, remained passive.

"How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?" he questioned, peering at the skull.

"Your water is a sore decayer of your dead body," the gravedigger said, proffering the skull. "Here's a skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years." Kaito plucked the skull from his hands, examining it closely.

"Whose was it?" he asked thoughtfully.

"This skull was the Kaitou Kid's, the Elsinore's jester," the gravedigger remembered. Kaito blinked in surprise, remembering the white-clad, laughing figure of his youth.

"Alas, poor Kid!" Kaito sighed sadly. "I knew him, Shinichi. A fellow of infinite jest. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times." He shuddered a little, raising the sad scull from which all joy and merriment had long since rotted away. "And now how _abhorred_ in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now that set the table on a roar?" he laughed humourlessly, tossing the skull back to the gravedigger's grasp. "But, soft…" he looked up the hill, stepping behind a tree as he caught sight of a black-clad funeral procession. "Here comes the magician, the lady, the entertainers. Who is that they follow?"

Shinichi was frozen by the query; they were carrying the cloth-wrapped body to a platform for an open-air cremation, and Kaito could not see whose corpse was wrapped within, but he would know soon. Shinichi knew he ought to find some way to tell his friend, before he realized from overhearing the funeral conversation, but he could find no way to frame the words. They died in his throat, and in the silence drifted the voice of the priest.

"Her death was doubtful," the man said irritably, "She should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers, shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her. Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites…"

"I tell thee, _churlish priest_," Saguru yelled angrily, "A ministering _Angel_ shall my sister be when thou liest howling."

Shinichi closed his eyes and heard Kaito's sharp gasp of pain escape at Saguru's words. Kaito, for his part, bent over, the words like a blow to the gut; he clutched at his chest to try to make his heart beat again, though he barely wanted it to. Saguru's sister… Aoko, poor, innocent Aoko…

"Farewell," he heard his mother sobbing to the cloth that he now knew to contain the body of his one beloved. "I hoped thou should have been my Kaito's wife." Kaito felt tears began to slip at his mother's words. Yes, he too had wanted… had longed for…

His regrets were intruded upon by Saguru's voice.

"Hold off the flame awhile," he said, in a voice hoarse with grief, "till I have caught her once more in mine arms." Kaito turned, consumed by a sudden anger, to see Saguru embrace the limp bundle, shoulders heaving, before throwing his head back and screaming to the heavens, "Now pile your dust upon the quick and the dead, till a m_ountain_ you have made!"

"Who is he whose grief bears such emphasis?" Kaito called angrily, striding towards the assembly, unable to merely watch any more. Shinichi reached out to try to stop his friend, to hold him back, but Kaito slipped his grasp. Snake sweated; the young man strode forward so boldly, so purposefully, suddenly full of a lucid fire that had been lacking for the past few months. Minami could not stop a wild smile from breaking through her tears at the sight of his son.

"This is I," Kaito declared, stopping before the frozen Saguru, "Kaito the magician!"

At the announcement of his name, Saguru seemed to decide that he was not some hallucination and lunged furiously towards him, hands around his throat, knocking him to the ground with a cry of "The devil take thy soul!" Minami screamed in shock, Shinichi running forward to help his friend.

"I _loved_ Aoko," Kaito said angrily to Saguru, allowing his tears to fall. "_Forty thousand_ brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up _my_ sum! Dost thou come here to _outface_ me with leaping in her grave?" Saguru suddenly seemed to come to his senses, springing away from Kaito as if he had been electrocuted. Kaito slowly sat up, everyone else frozen, almost scared to interfere. "Hear you, sir," he said quietly, "what is the reason that you use me thus? I loved you ever." His voice cracked and he stood, walking away, bent to hide his tears. Saguru watched him go, frozen and confused.

"I pray you, good Shinichi," Snake said quietly, jerking the young man out of his trance, "Wait upon him." Shinichi nodded woodenly before running after his friend. Snake reached out to pull Saguru to his feet.

"Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech," he murmured to Saguru. He blinked in surprise, what little colour left in his face leeching. Of course, their plan to kill Kaito, the one who had murdered his father and driven his sister to her death…

"Good Minami, set some watch over your son," Snake added to Minami, who nodded and hurried away. "_An hour of quiet shortly shall we see,_" he thought uneasily, "_till then in patience our proceeding be._"

Saguru stared back at his sister's body, trying to rebuild his resolve to put Kaito is _his_ grave, but somehow he could not forget his old friend's eyes. There had been no evil or hatred there. Only tears.

Aoko, he felt, would not take sides. She never did. She loved all too much.

_Kaito's room_

Shinichi sat brooding on his windowsill. Shinichi hovered uneasily nearby. He had never seen Kaito brood before but at his father's funeral; he had once been to bursting with life and merriment for that. He was used to a Kaito who did not shut up; he did not yet know how to handle a silent one.

"I found, Shinichi," he said eventually, quietly, as if admitting some terrible crime, "an exact command, that with many sorts of reason…" he swallowed heavily. His voice was still a little thick from the crying that Shinichi pretended not to know that he had been doing before he caught up to him. "My head should be struck off."

Shinichi was unable to help a sharp gasp in shock; an _execution order?!_ "Is't _possible_!"

"Here's the commission. Read it at more leisure," Kaito said dully, passing him a letter, which from a quick perusal did indeed have Snake's signature on it. "Being thus benetted, I devised a new commission from the magician that on the view should the _bearers_ be put to sudden death."

There was a moment's silence as Shinichi pondered this. Then he remembered just who had volunteered to travel with Kaito- now, he knew, to escort him to his death, unknowing that they were in fact travelling to theirs. "So Gin and Vodka go to't."

"Why, man, they did make love to this employment," Kaito laughed with false joviality. "They are not near my conscience."

Shinichi could only stare at his friend in some horror. "Why, what a magician is this?" he croaked. Kaito span to face him, that sudden fury igniting again.

"He that hath _killed_ my father," he roared, "and _whored_ my mother!" he had unconsciously raised his fist angrily, as if to strike Shinichi, but he suddenly seemed to notice it and quickly dropped it with a look of shock. Shinichi stood frozen, mentally debating whether it would be insulting to step out of his increasingly volatile friend's reach.

"It must be shortly known to him from England," he said tentatively. Kaito was leaning against the window again, staring at his reflection.

"It _will_ be short," he said hoarsely. "I am sorry, _good_ Shinichi, that to Saguru I forgot myself. The bravery of his grief did put me into a towering passion."

Shinichi was saved responding by a knock on the door. "Peace, who comes here?"

It was Andre, looking uncomfortable as he had been sent to deliver a challenge. They adjourned to the bar, as all sensible people do in serious times.

"Sir, you are not ignorant of what _excellence_ Saguru is at his weapon," Andre cautioned.

"What's his weapon?" Kaito asked idly.

"Katana and Shinai," Andre promptly responded.

"That's _two_ weapons, but well," Kaito sighed with a shrug. Andre gave Shinichi a confused look. Shinichi laughed nervously.

"The magician, sir," Andre continued nervously, "has wagered that in a _dozen_ passes between you and him, _he_ shall not exceed you _three_ hits." Shinichi shook his head. Saguru could not possibly want a purely friendly match so soon after his sister's death, not with the anger towards Kaito that he had displayed at the funeral. There must be some other motive…

But Kaito, to his shock, appeared to be seriously considering it.

"Let the katana be brought," he said finally. "I will win for him if I can." Andre nodded and quickly left to inform Saguru.

"… You will _lose_ this wager, my lord," Shinichi said once Andre was out of sight, trying to find some way to voice his fears.

"I do not think so," Kaito said calmly. "Since he went into France I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds."

"I will say you are not fit-" Shinichi began, standing to chase after Andre, but Shinichi caught his arm, pulling him back.

"Not a whit!" he said sharply. "We defy augury. There's special providence in the fall of a sparrow. The readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what _is't_ to leaves betimes?" Shinichi fell silent, but he felt that he _could_ see the future. It wasn't hard. There was a chalk line around it.

_The auditorium, the next day_

Saguru held his katana uneasily, not daring to touch the blade. All was prepared. Kaito had easily agreed to fighting with proper katana instead of shinai, stating that both were skilled enough to handle it and they were wearing some protective gear anyway, they could get nothing worse than scratches…

But a scratch was all it would take…

"Give me your pardon, sir."

He jumped when Kaito, already suited up, spoke to him. He could feel his hands sweating, and felt that the plan must be written on his forehead. However, it was Kaito who looked downcast and penitent.

"I've done you wrong," he said sadly. "Was't _Kaito_ that wronged Saguru? Never Kaito. His _madness_ is poor Kaito's enemy." He bowed almost to the floor. Saguru said nothing, but felt the sick feeling in his stomach grow. He had sworn to avenge his father and sister, but when he was facing not a monster but a grieving, broken human being…

"I am satisfied in nature," he finally said. "I do receive your offered love like love and will _not_ wrong it." He felt his tongue curl at the lie. Of course, it would be so easy to switch the poisoned blade for a clean one…

Snake watched them uneasily. He could see that the fire had gone from Saguru; he looked ill, nervous, uneasy. He looked as if he was having second thoughts. Snake was glad he had organized this match quickly; in a week, Saguru may well have changed his mind. He could not allow that.

"You know the wager?" he asked Kaito, sitting down in the front row next to Minami. Shuuichi stood to one side as the referee, Jodie and Andre at the doors, Shinichi sitting a couple of rows back.

"Your grave hath laid the odds o'th' weaker side," Kaito laughed merrily.

"I do not fear it," Snake said calmly. "I have seen you both. If Kaito give the first or second hit, the magician shall drink to Kaito's better health." He gestured to a water bottle he had set by the stage, narrowing his eyes on Saguru. The young man was deathly pale, and the hand with which he held his sword shook visibly.

"Come, begin," Shuuichi called, standing between them. They started in standard postures, Kaito focused, Saguru sweating. The first strike was quick; Kaito easily dodged Saguru's lunge and tapped him lightly with the point of the sword.

"A hit, a very palpable hit!" Minami cried a little giddily. Snake only watched sternly.

Shinichi stepped back, confused. He _knew_ Saguru was better than that. That had been too easy…

"Well. Again," Saguru said flatly.

"Kaito, this pearl is thine," Snake called, raising the water bottle. Saguru eyed it with a look of fear.

"I'll play this bout first," Kaito said airily. "Set it by awhile." Snake ground his teeth. Shinichi, watching him as much as Kaito, felt a pang of worry. What was Snake planning?

Shuuichi gestured them into place and started the second bout. Saguru dodged skilfully as Kaito struck at him, but made no move to strike Kaito that could not have been deflected by the merest novice.

"Our son shall win," Snake said darkly, gripping the water bottle tightly. Minami laughed crazily.

"He's _fat_ and scant of breath," she crowed, snatching the bottle from him and wrenching the lid off. "The lady carouses to thy fortune, Kaito," she called. The duelling men paused in surprise.

"Minami, do _not_ drink!" Snake cried desperately, attempting to snatch the bottle from her. She held it away, dancing out of his reach.

"I will, my lord. I pray you, pardon me," she said lightly, before upending the bottle and taking a gulp. Snake froze in horror, staring at his doomed wife.

"_It is the poisoned cup_," he thought, his mind racing. But he had specifically chosen a poison for which there was no antidote. "_It is too late._" Blinded with fear and rage, he turned to Kaito and Saguru as Minami, not yet feeling the poison's effects- but she would soon, too soon- proffered the bottle to Kaito.

"I dare not drink yet, madam," Kaito laughed, unknowing of the venom that was working its way through his mother's body. "By and by."

Saguru stared at Minami as she set the bottle down with a suddenly shaking hand. He knew what was in that bottle. She was doomed. He could see it in the fear and fury etched into Snake's face.

"_My lord, I'll hit him now,"_ he thought, gripping his poisoned sword, "_and yet, 'tis almost _against_ my conscience…_"

"Pass with your best violence," Kaito taunted him. Saguru summoned up his resolve, building it out of his sister's pain, his father's death, the dying lady before him.

"Have at you now!" he cried, lunging forwards. This time, he fought with superior speed and skill and a disregard for the rules; their katana locked and he knocked Kaito's aside, taking a quick swipe at the exposed collarbone at Kaito's neck- they wore no _men_. An instant later, Kaito dropped to the floor, clutching a bleeding scratch at the base of his neck; a mere scratch, nothing deeper, only blood, but it was enough, the venom was in his veins, Kaito would die, Saguru had murdered him…

His katana dropped from his shaking hand. He felt unable to move. Kaito did not feel the same. His own sword thrust out of reach, he caught Saguru's as Shinichi and Shuuichi rushed over to assist, swinging it up and stabbing it through the _do_. The sword stuck in the armour, it would not go deep, but if the way Saguru collapsed and the cold burning in his own injury was any indication, it did not need to.

"They bleed on both sides," Shinichi gasped, rushing past Snake, who was supporting a pale and half-conscious Minami, heading to his friend's side as Shuuichi bent over the prone Saguru.

"How _is't_ Saguru?" Shuuichi asked, confused and frightened by the damage apparently done by two small cuts.

"I am justly killed," Saguru groaned, lying on the floor and making no attempt to rise, "with mine own _treachery._"

Kaito, also near the floor of the stage, was at the level of the heads of Snake and Minami, and was alarmed to see his mother so pale and shivering violently.

"How does the lady?" he called weakly. Strength was leeching from his body…

"Sh-she _swoons_ to see them bleed," Snake said shakily, an attempt at a reassuring smile becoming a manic rictus. Minami pushed him away, collapsing onto the front of the stage.

"No, no- the _drink_!" she gasped, reaching for Kaito. "O my dear Kaito… I am _poisoned_!"

Kaito stared in horror as his mother's eyes slowly closed, her outstretched arm falling to the stage.

"Oh, villainy!" he gasped. "How?"

But she could no longer answer.

"It is _here_, Kaito," he heard a voice call weakly. He turned his head to see Saguru attempting to crawl towards him, pointing with a shaking finger at his katana still in Kaito's hand.

"The treacherous instrument in thy hand _envenomed_ hath turned itself on me," he gasped, growing visibly weaker by the second. "They mother's poisoned…" he coughed violently, spewing blood. "The _magician_, the _magician's_ to blame," he croaked, his eyes closing.

Kaito felt a fresh rage blossom inside of him. Saguru may have tried to kill him- _have_ killed him, he knew now that the burning in his veins and the numbness in his body was the poison- but he had only been used by Snake, who had killed Toichi, whose plot had killed Minami, whose actions had led to the deaths of Ginzo and Aoko…

"Then venom…" he murmured, turning to face Snake, "_To thy work!_"

Snake tried to run, but Jodie and Andre block him and Shinichi powerfully kicked another, clean water bottle at Snake, knocking him down. Kaito dove to the floor and grabbed the poisoned bottle, his rage giving him energy. It would not last, he knew, but he was dying anyway, and he had to die fulfilling the task that he had sworn to his father…

"O defend me!" Snake gasped, trying to struggle to his feet, but Shinichi caught him in an armlock and held him fast, dragging him back to Kaito, who silenced him by forcing the bottle to his mouth, squeezing it to force liquid down his throat.

"Here, crook," he snarled, "follow my _mother_!"

Minami had been dead within minutes of a mere sip. A whole half-bottle left Snake time for barely a gasp. Kaito collapsed back, feeling the fatigue of the poison again, the coldness wiping all feeling from his body. Jodie and Andre pulled Snake's body aside.

"He is justly served," Saguru whispered. Kaito crawled back up to his old friend's side. Both men had tears in their eyes, though of grief, pain or joy at the coming reunion with those that they loved, neither could say. "Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Kaito."

Kaito merely nodded, unable to speak. Saguru smiled sadly, then closed his eyes again, this time forever.

"I… follow thee…" Kaito gasped, giving up. As he fell, he heard running feet, felt someone catch him and support him. He could see his mother's corpse… "Wretched lady, adieu." The arms that caught him turned him, and now he lay in Shinichi's embrace, tears standing in his best friend's eyes. "Shinichi, I am dead…" he murmured. "Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied."

Shinichi nodded weakly, tears pouring down his cheeks. One shaking hand was still clutching the empty bottle-

_Almost_ empty. A small puddle of fatal water lay at the bottom. Kaito saw it the same moment Shinichi did.

"Yet here's some liquor left…" Shinichi whispered, raising the bottle.

"Give me the cup," Kaito croaked, forcing his last strength into his arm to reach up and fling the bottle away, unable to bear even one more death. "_Let go_!" he cried. "In this harsh world, draw they breath to tell my story." There was a sudden commotion outside, shouting and chanting. "What warlike noise is this?"

"Young Sanada," Shuuichi said distantly, sitting by Saguru's side with his head pressed into his knees. "With conquest come from Tokyo, to th'ambassadors of England give this warlike volley."

Kaito began coughing violently, blood pouring from his mouth as it had from Saguru's. "I cannot live to hear the news from England," he whispered. "Sanada has my dying voice… The rest is silence."

And so it was, as Kaito fell cold and still, his harsh laboured breaths fading and convulsions stilling. Shinichi abandoned restraint, sobbing like a newborn child over his best friend's corpse.

"Good night, sweet magician," he sober, "and flights of _angels_ sing thee to thy rest."

The doors burst open, and nobody moved to stop them; not Andre, Jodie or Shuuichi, curled up into their own silent worlds of shock and grief, not Shinichi, perhaps not noticing the intrusion as he wailed, and certainly not the dead. Kazumi Sanada, at the head of the mob this time, froze, the crowd falling silent as they took in the scene before them- Snake lying dead in the aisle, Minami lying half-on the stage, Saguru and Kaito both sprawled in pools of blood.

"O proud death," Sanada gasped, "so many princes at a shot hast struck?"

"Too late to tell him that Gin and Vodka are _dead_," his assistant murmured, staring with a mix of horror and revulsion at the sobbing living and silent dead. Shinichi slowly stood with his back to the assembly, his noisy grief falling silent, and only the hoarseness in his tone was to indicate that the tears had ever been.

"Give order that these bodies be placed to the view," he said gruffly, "and let _me_ speak to the yet unknowing world how these things came about…"

Sanada silently motioned the mob forward and, like sleepwalkers, they moved forwards, forming a wall of people down the aisle and passing the corpses of Kaito, Saguru and Minami along, above their heads, as if they were at some silent rock concert. Nobody would touch Snake's corpse. Some things rot too fast and stink too much.

"Bear Hamlet like a magician," Sanada said quietly, "and for his passage, the magician's music and the rites of magic speak loudly for him."

That night, a hundred white doves were released from the roof of the Elsinore. They flew away, riding the cold wind and their white feathers soon vanishing into the darkness.

_The End_


End file.
